Gabriela Lena Frank's 'Three Latin American Dances'

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2004, the Utah Symphony and conductor Keith Lockhart premiered Three Latin-American Dances by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Just a few days later, the same forces recorded Frank’s music for a release, to be sandwiched between Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.

Frank’s first dance, Jungle Jaunt opens with what she calls “an unabashed tribute” to the urban jungle evoked in Bernstein’s West Side Story. Her second dance, Highland Harawi, is more melancholy, perhaps a nod to that strain in Rachmaninoff’s music, and evokes the sounds of the bamboo quena flute of the Andes.

Her third dance, The Mestizo Waltz, is a pun on the famous Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt. As Frank explained: “This final [dance] is a lighthearted tribute to the mestizo or mixed-race music of the South American Pacific coast. It evokes the romancero tradition of popular songs and dances that mix influences from indigenous Indian cultures, African slave cultures, and western brass bands.”

Frank is of mixed Peruvian and Jewish background. When asked about how her heritage affects her music, she replied, “Sometimes the Latin influences are quite evident, and sometimes they are quite subtle. And of course, ‘Latin’ can mean so many different things. There is no one single Latin identity, as any Latino/Latinoamericano would tell you.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): Three Latin American Dances; Utah Symphony; Keith Lockhart, conductor; Reference Recording 105

On This Day

Births

• 1464 - English composer Robert Fayrfax, in Deeping Gate, Lincolnshire

• 1857 - Italian opera composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo, in Naples

• 1869 - German composer and conductor Hans Pfitzner (see May 5)

• 1872 - American composer and music educator Arthur Farwell, in St. Paul, Minnesota

• 1891 - Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, in Sontsovka (Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district), Ukraine (Julian date: April 11)

Deaths

• 1691 - French composer, harpsichordist and organist Jean Henri d’Angelbert, 62, in Paris

Premieres

• 1627 - Heinrich Schütz: opera Dafne (now lost), at Hartenfels Castle for the wedding of Princess Sophia of Saxony. This work is supposedly the first German opera.

• 1776 - Gluck: Alceste (second version), in Paris at the Académie Royale

• 1881 - Gilbert Sullivan: operetta Patience, at the Opera-Comique Theatre in London

• 1904 - Chadwick: Euterpe Overture, by the Boston Symphony

• 1911 - Berg: String Quartet, in Vienna, by the ad hoc quartet Brunner-Holzer-Buchbinder-Hasa Quartet. A later performance in Salzburg on August 2, 1923, by the Havemann Quartet at the First International Festival for Chamber Music, however, attracted wider attention and established Berg's worldwide reputation in musical circles

• 1920 - Janácek: opera The Excursions of Mr. Broucek, in Prague at the National Theater

• 1922 - Varèse: Offrandes for voice and small orchestra, in New York City, with Carlos Salzedo conducting

• 1948 - Jolivet: Concerto for Ondes Martenot and Orchestra, in Vienna

• 1958 - Robert Kurka: opera The Good Soldier Schweik (posthumously) at the New York City Opera

• 1979 - Rochberg: The Slow Fires of Autumn, for flute and harp, at Tully Hall in New York, with flutist Carol Wincenc

• 1981 - Ezra Laderman: String Quartet No. 6 (The Audubon), in New York City, by the Audubon Quartet

• 1993 - Morten Lauridsen: Les Chanson des Roses (five French poems by Rilke) for mixed chorus and piano, by the Choral Cross-Ties ensemble of Portland, Ore., Bruce Brown conducting

• 1994 - Broadway premiere of Sondheim: musical Passion

• 1998 - James MacMillan: Why is this night different? for string quartet, at London's Wigmore Hall by the Maggini Quartet

Others

• 1738 - Handel is a founding subscriber to the Fund for the Support of Decayed Musicians (now the Royal Society of Musicians) at its first meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in London. The fund was started after the widow and children of Handel’s oboe soloist, John Kitch, were found impoverished on the streets of London. Other subscribers to the fund included the British composers Boyce, Arne, Green and Pepusch (Gregorian date: May 4).