Cuatro Canciones Andinas (1999)

American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) presents a metaphorical parallel to Shostakovich’s life experience. Both of her works present her lamentation over the subsumation and destruction of the indigenous Peruvian culture by the Spanish conquistadors. The first of them, Sueños de Chambi: Snapshots for an Andean Album , was inspired by photographs by Martin Chambi (1891–1973), who documented Peru’s vanishing pre-Spanish ways of life. The second, Cuatros Canciones Andinas (texts by José Maria Arguedas), presents three heartbreaking poems about love and loss. In all cases her music is tonal and disarmingly simple, but, in its Amerindian subtlety, goes right to the heart of that culture. Her mission in both works is to achieve a telling balance between those two cultural currents. Her results are ear-opening.