As a pianist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk gained worldwide acclaim in the middle of the nineteenth century for his flashy and articulate performance style. And as a composer, his works were influenced by his far-flung travels, as well as his globetrotting imagination. Fancying himself as a virtuosic interpreter of rustic folk traditions after the manner of Chopin and his mazurkas, Gottschalk was particularly inspired by the musical traditions of the Caribbean, and a number of his best-known piano works draw on the song and dance traditions of the French Antilles, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and surrounding areas. Souvenirs de la Havane (Souvenirs From Havana, Op. 39), is one of a handful of pieces Gottschalk composed in the 1850s after the manner of the Caribbean contradanza, and is a fine example of Gottschalk's effort to balance crowd-pleasing pianistic flourish with a desire to convey, through careful articulation and texture, the essence of the musical culture from which he borrows. Gottschalk composed Souvenirs de la Havane (or, in some editions, "Recuerdos de la Habana" or "Caprice de concert") in 1859, at the beginning of an infamously indulgent three-year tour cum extended vacation in the West Indies. (Other pieces from the period include the popular four-hand work Ojos Criollos, Op. 37, and the lively Réponds-moi.) The piece is underscored nearly throughout by the distinctive habanera rhythm, beginning simply underneath a dark and rather Spartan melody but gradually infiltrating the entire texture. Gottschalk's syncopated rhythms, by themselves quite adventurous considering the time period in question, are set off even further by elaborate polyrhythms between the steady pulse of the habanera in the bass and occasional fluid triplet elaborations in the right hand. The rhythmic vibrancy of the piece's middle section couples with a shift to major mode, while the composer's extrovert peforming personality adds elements of pianistic flourish, as in the tricky extended passage for right hand alone, or the lightning-fast leaps across the keyboard near the end (marked Volante). Here, Gottschalk derives the piece's energy from the contradanza, even as the pianist in him presents the form in elaborate virtuosic dressing.

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