String Quartet No.2, Op.26

Libero e rapsodico

Furioso

The second of Ginastera’s three string quartets was written in 1958, not long after he had discovered serialism. This should be no cause for alarm, however. While the Second String Quartet is certainly more progressive than the First, dating from ten years earlier, it is neither atonal in harmony nor dodecaphonic in construction. Its language is still related, though much more distantly by now, to the Argentian “gauchesco” music he had so exuberantly celebrated in his ballet Estancia in 1941. There are echoes of Berg’s Lyric Suite in the movement headings and very occasionally in the actual music but Ginastera’s model at this time was quite clearly Bartók, to whose example he turned for encouragement in the problematical matter of reconciling a radical folk-based idiom with the traditional requirements of the string quartet.

The Bartók influence is obvious almost from the start in an unmistakable echo of the aggressive repeated-note motif at the beginning of the Hungarian composer’s Fifth String Quartet. Ginastera makes it the main theme of his Allegro rustico, a generally vigorous and occasionally even violent movement that relaxes its dynamic grip only in the two short episodes devoted to another Bartók inspiration - a contrastingly quiet idea designed to wind its chromatically sinuous line round the four-part texture. The Berg element enters with the expressive violin melody that opens the Adagio angoscioso and passes to the cello before it is taken up in an impassioned and increasingly complex contrapuntal development. The colourfully scored middle section, with its highly eloquent cello recitative, is even more dramatic.

The wittily conceived third movement is characteristic Ginastera. While it might include a Bartók sound here and there, like the occasional pizzicato glissando, it is clearly related to the Vivacissimo scherzo of Ginastera’s own First Quartet, though even more fantastically scored. Fleet of foot and light of touch in the outer sections, while firmer in line in the middle, it is entirely worthy of its magico qualification. The Libero e rapsodico heading is similarly appropriate to the fourth movement, which takes the form of a series of improvisatory and rhapsodic solos freely developing in line and, above all in the cello episode, demonstratively double-stopped.

From the point of view of a composer committed to reconciling his own national idiom with the tradition of the string quartet, perhaps the most successful movement is the final Furioso, which combines malambo rhythms and snatches of dance tunes with reminders of the main theme of the first movement in a tirelessly sustained surge of energy.