The chamber works and songs of Alberto Ginastera on this 2005 Orfeo release fall into three categories, as defined by the composer. Danzas argentinas for piano, Op. 2 (1937), as well as Dos canciones, Op. 3 (1938) and Cinco canciones populares argentinas, Op. 10 (1937), both for voice and piano, are in Ginastera's "objective nationalist" style, a straightforward manner of setting the gauchos' songs with comparatively little invention or decoration. Pampeana No. 1 for violin and piano, Op. 16 (1947), and Pampeana No. 2 for cello and piano, Op. 21 (1950), are rhapsodies on Argentinean themes in Ginastera's "subjective nationalist" vein, and show his growing freedom in adapting folk material to a more sophisticated, modernist idiom. The masterful Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 49 (1979), represents Ginastera's longest period, the "neo-Expressionist," atonal-dodecaphonic phase that lasted from 1958 to the composer's death in 1983. Yet even in this final style, Ginastera exhibits much of the passion that sustained the early works, and treats his new materials with melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic devices derived from the discoveries of his youth. The performances by soprano Ofelia Sala, violinist Henry Raudales, cellist Gerhard Zank, and pianist Donald Sulzen, recorded between 1999 and 2001, are first-rate in technique and expression, and Orfeo's sound quality is exceptionally vibrant and naturally resonant.