On Feb. 21, Alberto Ginastera's modern-day Passion "Turbae ad passionem gregorianam" will be performed at Carnegie Hall for the very first time in celebration of the composer's 100th anniversary.

The piece will be brought to the stage by conductor and composer Julian Wachner, who will make his Carnegie Hall debut with the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity's resident contemporary music orchestra, NOVUS NY.

Ginastera is considered one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of Latin America, but has remained in obscurity in the U.S. The composer is credited with writing three operas, two ballets, concertos, piano music and a number of orchestral and chamber works. For the concert, "Turbae ad passionem gregorianam" will be coupled with Charles Ives' famous Symphony No.4.

Conductor and composer Wachner was able to speak with Latin Post about the program and his advocacy for discovering unknown works.

Latin Post: How did you come up with the program and what are the challenges of playing these two works?

Julian Wachner: They both call for large forces and their musical demands are so advanced and so professional. There is not a second for the players or singers to relax. They just have to go with it. On top of the technical difficulties, it's about making a musical, artistic and interpretive statement that has an arc. I believe these works are masterpieces and they need more than just to be realized to the score. They need some type of interpretation. The [Charles] Ives comes with the added difficulty that it has a performance tradition and that comes with a level of responsibility and a series of expectations. It also comes with some impossible tasks because Ives himself had a very fluid interpretation of his music and how it ought to be realized with specific times. So it really is up to the conductor and performer on how to prioritize Ives' own wishes.

In the case of the Ginastera, it's a language that is mid-20th century with some technophonic and dense structures. So getting beyond the challenges that are on the page and realizing that most of the players and singers are dealing with an idiom that is no longer their everyday meat and potatoes. Really figuring out how to tune some of these chords, was working hard to do that.

LP: How are the styles of these pieces different?

JW: Ives sounds like a romantic Sibelius symphony in comparison to the Ginastera. The Ives has a calm and beautiful fourth movement that has that sort of old-fashion quality. Then you have a fugal third movement. It's a 30-minute piece and a good chuck of it lives in the tonal world. And Ginastera is truly an atonal work that is based on 15 different tone rows strictly dealt with. However, it's not Schoenberg. It is definitely working within the full chromatic range. It is ruthless and relentless, but at the same time he is able to conjure up harmonic entities that are stunningly beautiful.

LP: The Ginastera does not have a big performance history. How did you come across it?

JW: Leave it to the publisher. I have been interested in Ginastera my whole life. My mother played his piano sonata. I played it on my senior recital. A lot of my own compositional world is flavored by his music. About three years ago, Boosey Hawkes sent around a brochure noting that Ginastera was turning 100 in 2016. It listed a number of his works. And, lo and behold, there were three massive operas and this epic masterpiece "Turbae." So I set out to find out what this piece was all about. And I happen to know the conductor who premiered it with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1974. I got on the phone with him and he told me that it was a masterpiece and that if I could resurrect it, it would be fantastic. It became short of a crusade of types. And we have plans to record the work a few months after we do it.

I think that the number of performances that this piece has received can be counted on one hand.

LP: Is this the first time your performing the work?

JW: Of course. It is the first time anyone has heard it in New York in 40 years.

LP: Why do you think it's important that this piece is being performed in Carnegie Hall?

JW: For me, it is not only this piece. It's about Ginastera. I am actually shocked that not a single major opera company, including the Kennedy Center, is not presenting any one of Ginastera's epic operas. They all premiered at the Kennedy Center in the 1960s, the first one of which launched Placido Domingo's career. To me, he is a composer in danger of being easily forgotten and I think it is important that he not be and that it's not just Argentinian folkloric music that remains in our memory. But these are works of great sophistication and intellectualism and passion. I want them not to be forgotten.

Having this performance at Carnegie Hall is meant to be a statement about the importance of this work. And it was really the Ginastera that drove this whole program. The Ives was added to the program much later. Me and my programming team at Trinity went back and forth about what could possibly be paired with it. It seemed appropriate to team North America's masterpiece with South America's masterpiece.

LP: Do you feel these two pieces complement each other?

JW: Absolutely, they both deal with deep philosophical and religious questions. The Ginastera is more blatantly obvious in that it is the Passion, but Ginastera adds a whole fourth movement which is the resurrection scene which no other Passion in history does. So he is making a statement about God.

The Ives is dealing with the American melting pot and he is dealing with the contradictions. All the hymns and popular song that are within the Ives, whether they are missionary based or minstrel songs, to a modern person's sensibility they are actually kind of troubling source material. The way he deals with it and matches it all up, he ends up with a simplistic God to be. It is almost a similar statement to what Ginastera is trying to make as a sort of divine force. However, what is the divine?

LP: What is your relationship to Charles Ives' music?

JW: As a composer, my main teacher was Lukas Foss. So I consider that my music is on a trajectory that goes back to Ives, Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss and with Leonard Bernstein in there. I performed a lot of his music and my stepfather, who's a conductor, conducted Charles Ives' second symphony in the 70's. I remember going to those concerts as a kid and that music really impacted me. His use of bitonality and clusters and found songs that are manipulated and his background as an organist... I have a real connection with him as a person. I believe he is the grandfather of my music as well.

In a way, I am presenting two grandfathers of my music. The Latin version and perhaps the more American version.

LP: Do you think it is important to advocate for unknown works like the Ginastera and unknown composers?

JW: Yeah, that is part of what I do. I always try to find things because I was taught by my other composer teacher Theodore Antoniou, a Greek Composer, that everything needs to be heard. He would have these epic concerts with 40 pieces and everyone would think he was crazy. And he urged me as a conductor to always be a composer's advocate. Whether it a young composer or an old composer. Right now, we are so focused on the young composers and conductors and there is a lot of great music that is not being listened to right now. I find that it is part of my mission as a conductor at the moment.

LP: What do you look forward to audiences taking away from this performance?

JW: To hear both of these stories told in a different way. To be wrapped up in the aura of this music is challenging. I think it's going to be a thrilling performance and one that makes a good argument for Ginastera belonging in the pantheon of 20th century composers.

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