<\/p>
Gabriela Ortiz is a Mexican composer whose music combines elements of folk, rock, African and Afro-Cuban influences, as well the avant-garde. Performed by Mar\u00eda Due\u00f1as, her new Violin Concerto \u2018Altar de Cuerda\u2019 features on the second release of Gustavo Dudamel\u2019s Latin American series with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Platoon. Here, Gabriela selects for us some of the best classical music from Latin America.<\/p>
This piece, based on a poem about a serpent by the Cuban poet Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, really captures its rhythmic power and essence. Whenever I hear the opening, which starts with a slithering motif on the bass clarinet, I immediately imagine this serpent that is coming to bite me. <\/p>
Revueltas wrote the piece after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, so it really belongs to the Mexican nationalist period. But unlike other nationalist composers, Revueltas managed to sound simultaneously Mexican and completely himself. He was a real genius, which makes it all the more tragic that he died so young, aged only 40.<\/p>
Like Revueltas, the Mexican 20th-century composer Carlos Ch\u00e1vez tends to be put in the \u2018nationalist\u2019 box. But because he lived much longer, he had time to absorb aspects of the European avant-garde. Tambuco<\/em>, which he wrote in 1964, is a pioneering piece of percussion repertoire: really difficult to play, rhythmically complex and colourful. <\/p> The introduction is so original, starting with the sound of rattles. It just goes to show that \u2018Mexican\u2019 means more than wearing a sombrero and playing music centered around the theme of the fiesta; we do have complex music.<\/p> This virtuosic 1961 piece has a great combination of ingredients. On one hand, it\u2019s very modernist and abstract, but Ginastera<\/a><\/strong> also had a nationalistic aesthetic, drawing on Argentine rhythms.<\/p> I love the particular way that this piano concerto mixes the folkish character with a sense of modernism. It creates a musical language that is very unique, very universal but at the same time very Ginastera, without ever sacrificing any sense of his characteristic intensity.<\/p> Normally, when you think of Villa-Lobos<\/a><\/strong> you think of his Bachianas Brasileiras<\/em>, or his repertoire for guitar. But my personal favourite is this work for chorus and orchestra written in 1926. Villa-Lobos deploys the choir in a very onomatopoeic way, using hardly any words, to create something flamboyant, colourful and extrovert that really showcases Brazilian culture. I<\/p> t is direct and visceral – the kind of music you want to dance to. And it is so much fun, both to sing and to play.<\/p>Alberto Ginastera: Piano Concerto No. 1<\/h3>
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Ch\u00f4ros No. 10<\/h3>
Tania Le\u00f3n: Inura<\/em>\u00a0<\/h3>