Search - Ginastera, Lso, Ben-Dor :: Popol Vuh: Mayan Creation / Estancia / Panambi

Wonderful ripoff - even at Naxos prices

A. Bjelland | NYC | 07/07/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a frustratingly marketed disc: seemingly for the Ginastera "completist" (though perhaps a listener who had caught "Malambo" on the radio and was curious to hear more from the great Argentine composer would also pick it up), fully one-third of the disc consists of previously (re)released material. The "casual" Ginestera listener (if such a creature exists) would be better served by the Naxos re-release (originally Conifer:Alberto Ginastera: Panambí (Ballet, 1937) / Estancia (Complete Ballet, 1941) - London Symphony Orchestra / Gisèle Ben-Dor) of Gisele Ben-Dor's marvelous "World Premiere" recording of the complete Estancia and Panambi ballet scores (Panambi Estancia).



And therein lies the problem, for the Ginastera completist will no-doubt already own that disc in one incarnation or the other. Fully 26 minutes of the present disc are excerpts from that very recording, re-fashioned as so-called "extended suites." The booklet notes go to great lengths (hubris, anyone?) to praise the superiority of these "extended" suites to those that the composer may have designed himself, and the gurus at Naxos (alas, how the mighty succumb to the illness of the marketing hordes) deign to place an asterisk next to them and proclaim them "World Premiere Recordings"!



By this logic, I could purchase the rights to some out-of-print recording of, say, Grieg's complete incidental music to Ibsen's Peer Gynt, drop a few movements here and there, and fashion my own "suite" from the remainder, claiming that it's the newest, most improved, "World Premiere Recording" of never-before-heard material. Of course any idiot who knows how to press the track advance button could will have stumbled upon a similar "suite."



And for that reason I'm deducting two stars from what should be a five-star review.



The remainder of this disc (about 46 minutes) - original release material as far as I can tell - is very well played and recorded. The now out-of print "World Premiere Recording" of Ginastera's final (and incomplete) work, Popol Vuh, that Slatkin recorded with the St. Louis SO (Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps; Ginastera: Popol Vuh; Haydn: The Creation: Representation of Chaos) is slightly superior, the eerie depths of the work brought out that much more fully (and the very creative Haydn and Stravinsky couplings make it well worth seeking out a used copy).



The true "World Premiere Recording" of Shimon Cohen's orchestration of the Suite de Danzas Criollas (compare with the original piano version: Ginastera: Complete Piano & Organ) and Ben-Dor's recording of Ollantay (the only work here I didn't already own a recording of - though there are three or four alternatives available here at Amazon.com), round out the disc.



If only Naxos had included a new recording of one of the Cello Concertos (the no-doubt informed but sometimes painfully out-of-tune recordings by the composer's widow beg for a better rendition), or Pampeana No.3, or Jubilum, or even more new orchestrations of Ginastera's chamber works, instead of the "extended suites," this would have been a most attractive disc. At least we can hope that the enterprising label will eventually bring us those works, having already recorded so much of Ginastera's oeuvre."