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Composers rediscovered - Gaito and Waghalter
Constantino Gaito and Augustina Herrera GAITO Piano Trio, op. 25. Cello Sonata, op. 26. Piano Quintet, op. 24 • Making CDs has become cheaper, so that many projects have been completed that not long ago would have been foolhardy or impossible. 2012 has seen professional musicians, such as members of symphony orchestras, releasing discs of their personal interests away from the mainstream repertoire. These two composers have long languished unknown and unremembered. The great granddaughter of this Argentinian pioneer has done stirling service by bringing the career of Constantino Gaito (1878-1945) and his chamber compositions back to notice. Her comprehensive notes (they might need magnifying glasses) tell of an important period in his country's music; a prolific composer, he founded the national opera and ballet and wrote 'the first chamber music in a national aesthetic' [A H]. I liked best the piano trio of 1917, which would go down very well at Music Academies, and would gain a positive response from chamber music groups who like to include a novelty in their programmes. The piano quintet is very demanding and, I thought, suffers from the pianist having too many notes, rather as did Mendelssohn's chamber music with piano. Naxos is to be congratulated for bringing these works to our notice, and at their budget price to encourage musical explorers. Peter Grahame Woolf Waghalter & Irmina Trynkos
Despite reservations about her performance at Cadogan Hall, this debut CD, recorded sympathetically by Mike Clements at the Henry Wood Hall in London [R], is a notable success and I endorse Amazon's enthusiastic reader reviews. Perhaps she is an artist who flourishes in studio conditions? These unknown concertante works and violin sonata justify all the claims made for them and I would rate the Waghalter concerto (1911) high amongst those of the post-Bruch period. Rather than repeating the material on line about Irmina Trynkos's project, I prefer to steer MP readers to sample the concerto as introduced by the artist on YouTube and towards adding this bargain disc to their collections. Recommended enthusiastically. Peter Grahame Woolf
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