Guastavino: Pueblito, mi pueblo, Cancion Argentina (1957)

Accompanied by a noted specialist in Argentine piano music, brother and sister make a rare appearance together to honour a colourful musical heritage, the ‘chamber song’ born in Buenos Aires around 1900 and passed on from generation to generation right up to Guastavino and Astor Piazzolla. The subject here is love, love of a generous land, and memories: each song subtly distils a serene melancholy which has the flavour of life itself and the consciousness of the passage of time.

Guastavino is one of Argentina’s major composers. He created an attractive national music using folk elements and a language firmly rooted in Romanticism. This collection includes his Clarinet Sonata, piano solos, as well as transcriptions of some of the maestro’s loveliest songs for clarinet. Héau is an important figure in the French clarinet school, performing as a soloist as well as giving master classes.

Argentinian-born Désirée Halac presents a beautifully performed recital of songs by Carlos Guastavino. The obituary written for The Guardian called Guastavino the most quietly distinctive voice in 20th century Argentinian music. His distillation of local folk elements into an avowedly romantic-nationalist idiom was unique and markedly different from his colleagues. Guastavino wrote some 300 works, more than half of them the delightful songs, often winsome or tinged with sadness, on which his reputation rests.

Carlos Guastavino was born in Santa Fe Province, Argentina. He studied music in Santa Fe with Esperanza Lothringer and Dominga Iaffei, and in Buenos Aires with Athos Palma. A talented pianist, he performed his piano works in London in 1947, 1948, and 1949, invited by the BBC, and as a recipient of a scholarship from the British Council. One of the foremost Argentine composers of the 20th century, his production amounted to over 200 works, most of them songs for piano and voice. His style was quite conservative, always tonal and lusciously romantic. His compositions were clearly influenced by Argentine folk music.