Carlos Gomes
Il Guarany
 

Although he was born in Brazil, Gomes spent much of life working in Italy, where his operatic music found enthusiastic audiences.

His musical style is somewhere between those of Rossini and Wagner. His most popular work, Il Guarany, gives a European operatic treatment to the Brazilian novel of the same name.

So popular was the opera that in Brazil, the overture is treated like a second national anthem, a bit like Land of Hope and Glory in the UK.

Gomes' work is now largely overlooked by European opera houses, although during the nineteenth century he was feted as a great composer - Verdi once described him as a "truly musical Genius".

Conductor: Enrique Arturo Diemecke

Mexican composer Jose Pablo Moncayo started out as a Jazz pianist, but ended up conducting Mexico's National Symphony Orchestra.

Huapango, written in 1941, is probably his best known work, and is based on three Mexican folk songs.

While the piece might not have a huge amount of musical substance, the Mexican rhythms and colourful orchestration make it a perennial crowd pleaser. It is heard here played by the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra.
 

Conductor: Fernando Lozano

Ginastera is probably Argentina's most famous composer, and one of the few to have made a name for himself outside of Latin America.

His Variaciones Concertantes is a set of variations on a theme based on the open strings of a guitar. This chord crops up in a number if his other works from the same period, and it is often seen as a sign of Argentinian folk music creeping into his composition.

In this piece, some variations are played b y the orchestra, whilst others highlight  instruments in a solistic fashion, in particular, the clarinet, viola, violin, horn and double bass.

The expression "concertante" is used to describe works which, although not actually concertos, use instruments in a soloistic way. Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante is a good example of this.

Conductor: Enrique Arturo Diemecke