Andean piano KEITH BRAMICH listens to the piano music of Uña Ramos arton    021248 130539

Uña Ramos is an exponent of both the traditional Indian flute, the quena, and the pan flute, but also a composer of Andean folk music. Although he now lives in Europe, he was born in the Andes, on the borders of Bolivia and Argentina, studying at Argentina's Conservatory of Santiago del Estero, where Josefina, daughter of composer Andres Chazarreta, told him 'you must leave the conservatory ... here you can't become a composer because your creative freedom is being stolen'.

His music [listen -- track 15, 1:43-2:51] combines the folk idioms of South America with European classical traditions and (at least as arranged for piano and heard here) is syncopated, light in style, emotional, a bit quirky, perhaps sometimes clichéd, and could (arguably) be more varied.

Young Argentinian pianist Sebastián Forster copes well here, with playing considerably better than his CD liner note! There's more extensive information about Uña Ramos online however, including a mini-interview.

For help listening to the sound extracts here, please refer to our questions & answers page.

Record Box is Music & Vision's regular Saturday series of shorter CD reviews