Constantino Gaito String Quartets code: TR050416 Contains the complete works for string quartets by C. Gaito (Buenos Aires 1878-1945). Was performed by the Sarastro Quartett, Winterthur, Switzerland, in a coproduction Tradition - Radio Switzerland DRS2. World Premiere Recording This CD is sponsored by the Swiss Embassy in Argentina repertoire

Constantino Gaito was born and died in Buenos Aires (August 3, 1878-December 14, 1945). He was a scion of an Italian family that had settled in Argentina in 1874. His father, Gaetano Gaito (1852-1915), was a prominent Neapolitan violinist, a disciple of Ernesto Camillo Sívori (1815-1895) -the only student trained by Niccoló Paganini-, who brought to Argentina for the first time the violin technique of the outstanding Genoa genius in 1850, when he made presentations in Buenos Aires that amazed the audiences of the time.
Gaetano Gaito established Argentina’s first string quartet and was a promoter of chamber music in the country. Not surprisingly, his son Constantino felt the same passion for that music genre, evincing a surprising precocity in the musical arts.
Constantino Gaito was initially trained as a violinist with his father. As a child, he received piano lessons from Julián Aguirre and Edmundo Piazzini (1857-1927). His qualities as a performer initially became evident at age 10, in Mendelssohn’s First Concerto for Piano and Orchestra conducted by Pietro Melani (1854-1900), a renowned Italian violinist of the time and a disciple of Joseph Joachim, who also premiered his first orchestra works, the Gavotta opus 4 and the Oberture opus 8.
Although initially under marked Italian influence, a frequent trait in previous composers, Gaito’s creations were a valuable contribution to Argentine music. With time he achieved an agile, virile and elegant style, with a solid musical balance, that had a profound influence in the country’s music at the turn of the century. A music that at times presented a certain universal character without relinquishing its Argentine nature and a traditionalist stance.
As opposed to other maestros, as he matured he developed a neutral musical style that, nowithstanding the recurrence of some impressionist elements, was distant from the French school influenced by Alberto Williams and his disciples.
In his later compositions he included elements of so called Indo-American music, similarly to Pascual De Rogatis (1880-1980), Manuel Gómez Carrillo (1883-1968), Enrique Mario Casella (1891-1948) and Héctor Iglesias Villoud (1913-1988), one of his prominent students. He also incorporated elements from jazz and tango, and together with Ernesto Drangosch (1882-1925), they were the first Argentine composers to give tango a symphonic dimension.
His extraordinary technical skills also made him a distinguished orchestratator, and he contributed to the development of Argentine symphony music, especially with the above mentioned works, his ballets La Flor del Irupé (1927), La ciudad de las puertas de oro (postumous, premiered in 1947), Oratorio San Francisco Solano (circa 1936) for violin, choir and orchestra and his symphonic poems El Ombú (1924) and Visión (1928), besides other orchestral, chamber and piano works.
From 1893 on, Gaito was the pianist of several music institutions, organized events and conducted rehearsals at the Teatro de la Opera, participating in the Argentine premier of Verdi’s opera Falstaff. The recognition he gained through these and many other activities resulted in a scholarship to refine his skills in Europe, granted by the National Fine Arts Commission. Several of the Commission’s members, including Williams, Aguirre and Panizza, presented the project to the government under the second administration of General Julio A. Roca [(1898-1904) (1843-1914)], asking for a scholarship for Gaito as had previouly been done in 1882 for Williams and Justino Clérice.
He attended the Conservatory San Pietro a Majella, in Naples (surely on his father’s initiative, since he was a native of Naples), which at the time was among the most renowmed, together with those of Milan, Paris, Leipzig and Berlin. There he studied composition with maestro Pietro Platania (1828-1907) –the Institute’s director-, and piano and counterpoint with Francesco Simonetti (1846-1904). He further attended courses by Ferruccio Busoni, and became one of the most distinguished students of his class. He carried out an intense activity, conducting orchestras to perform his own compositions, and as a member of chamber ensembles at his conservatory and Milan’s. He earned important distinctions, such as the Silver Crown in 1900, when he met Jules Massenet and Giuseppe Verdi, who befriended him. He also became aquainted with other performers such as Jan Kubelik, Joseph Joachim, Pablo de Sarasate and Camille Saint-Saëns.
Shortly after returning to Argentina he devoted himself immediately to teaching and other musical activities at the Gaito Conservatory, established by his father. He also held various public and private positions: he was a teacher at Colegio Nacional Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a member of the executive committee of the Colón Theater, director of the Fracassi Conservatory, president of the Argentine Chamber Music Association, and professor of the National Music and Performing Arts Conservatory.
The first two decades of the 20th Century were very intense for Gaito. In those years, besides being active as a musician, composer and pedagogue, he was the artistic director of the Argentine Chamber and Symphonic Music Society, promoting chamber music, an activity that he sustained until a few days before his death.
His restricted but valuable musical legacy in that genre includes extremely beautiful pieces, with a well-balanced formal structure and a refined instrumental technique, such as his Quintet for Piano and Strings opus 24, the Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello opus 25, the Sonata for Cello and Piano opus 26 and his two string quartets, which despite their relative dissemination, are considered fundamental in Argentine chamber music.
Gaito may be compared to Williams in the broad variety of activities that he conducted within the world of music. Among them, helping train several composers who left their imprint on Argentine music, such as Carlos López Buchardo (1881-1948), the brothers José María (1892-1964) and Juan José Castro (1895-1968), Lucio Goldberg (1907-1965), Juan Carlos Paz (1897-1972), Arnaldo D’Espósito (1907-1945) and Luis Gianneo (1897-1968). He published books on theory and harmony, and received several municipal awards, the award from the National Fine Arts Directorate and the Argentine Chamber Music Association prize.

Mr. Diego M. Orellana MA, is the author of the biography of Constantino Gaito and the musicological study on his works, at the CD´s booklet.