Argentina Durán: Mexican Solo Piano Music

Pianist Argentina Durán (presumably at the keyboard of the Yamaha CFX grand piano on which she recorded the album being discussed) (photograph by Alfredo Hacheve, courtesy of Classical Promo Services)

Rapsodia Mexicana is a new solo album by Mexican pianist Argentina Durán. Over the course of fourteen tracks, she reviews works by nine different Mexican composers. For most readers the most familiar of these will be Manuel Ponce, and I have to confess that the remaining eight all provided me with “first contact” experiences. The album is currently available for digital download through an Amazon.com Web page. The physical release is scheduled for June 1; and, presumably, on that date, the Purchase Options pulldown menu will be upgraded.

It is only fair for me to confess that, by way of disclaimer, none of the selections on this album were familiar to me. Indeed, the only hint of recognition came towards the end of the final track, when one of the themes in Jesús Corona’s “Rapsodia Mexicana” turned out to be “La Cucaracha!” (This left me wondering how many of the themes in Franz Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies were actually familiar to Hungarians!) Ironically, I had encountered Ponce’s four-movement “Danzas Mexicanas” composition a little more than two years ago, when I wrote my two articles about pianist Álvaro Cendoya’s project to record that composer’s complete works for piano.

I suppose that what struck me most about all of the composers encountered on Rapsodia Mexicana is that each one of them had cultivated his own approach to exploring embellishments. Indeed, one can almost take these tracks as reflections on jazz, whose expressiveness emerges from embellishments (otherwise known as “riffs”) that rise above the tunes themselves. It is also worth noting that, over the course of the album, the attentive listener encounters a refreshing variety of dispositions. Put another way, no one would accuse Durán of having prepared a “same old same old” program over the course of her album!

Perhaps it is time for me to revisit some of those other Ponce compositions …