Adagietto pianissimo

Ginastera was the leading Argentine composer of the twentieth century — a teacher of Piazzolla, a champion of South American art music in the international concert hall, and the writer of three style-periods (objective nationalism, subjective nationalism, neo-expressionism). The Suite de danzas criollas Op. 15 (1946) sits at the end of his subjective-nationalist phase: five short dances drawing on Argentine criollo material reframed in a more abstract harmonic language.

Adagietto pianissimo opens the suite. Technically the piece tests three things at high level. First, sustained quiet playing — the dynamic range stays pp to mp, and a Grade 7 candidate playing p loud loses the piece's character entirely. Second, voicing across a slow-moving five-voice texture with chromatic side-shadows. Third, patient rubato: Argentine dance rubato is small and pervasive, not large and occasional.

Two pitfalls. First, students treat the chromatic side-shadows as expressive moments and lean on them; they should slip past as harmonic colour. Second, the dynamic plan is taken too wide; this piece must stay in the soft end of the keyboard.

Listening: Ginastera's piano music is now widely available on PD recordings (his works started entering PD in 2018 in many jurisdictions). His own conducting recordings calibrate the South American idiom most clearly.