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Daniel Binelli Nashville Symphony Internationally renowned as a master of the bandoneón, Argentine Daniel Binelli The GRAMMY® Award- PIAZZOLLA tours extensively in concert and recital, performing a wide range of compositions, winning Nashville Symphony many of which have roots in the tango of Binelli’s native land, where he is known has a growing international as an expert of the form. A seasoned composer in his own right, Binelli worked on reputation for its recordings and arrangements in the orchestra of Osvaldo Pugliese. He is also widely acclaimed as innovative programming. With Sinfonía Buenos Aires the foremost exponent and now torch-bearer of the music of Astor Piazzolla, a 140 performances annually, the

Photo: Peter Schaaf legacy acquired after the two toured internationally with the New Tango Sextet 82-member orchestra is an arts Bandoneón Concerto, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas before Piazzolla’s death in 1992. Orchestras with which Binelli has appeared as leader in Nashville and beyond, guest soloist include The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta offering a broad range of Symphony, Montréal Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Tokyo, Mexico City Photo: Harry Butler classical, pops and jazz concerts, Daniel Binelli, Bandoneón • Tianwa Yang, Violin Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Teatro Colón Orchestra special events, children’s concerts and community outreach programs. As a national and international ambassador of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra for the citizens of Tennessee, the Nashville Symphony has received far-reaching acclaim for its numerous Nashville Symphony Orchestra • Giancarlo Guerrero of Caracas and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In modern jazz and contemporary recordings on Naxos, making the ensemble one of the most active recording orchestras in the country. These music, Binelli has played with Paquito de Rivera and the Dizzy Gillespie recordings have received eight total GRAMMY® nominations and, in 2008, three GRAMMY® Awards for Made in Orchestra, Andreas Vollenweider, Lalo Schifrin, Michael Brecker and Gary America, a recording of works by American composer Joan Tower. Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the new home Burton. He frequently collaborates with TangoMetropolis, a complete tango of the Nashville Symphony, opened in September 2006 to critical acclaim. This new cultural center in downtown ensemble of which he is music director. He is also widely known for his Nashville has had a significant artistic, social and economic impact on the city, and has given the Nashville contributions to film music. Symphony a venue equal to its growing reputation.

Tianwa Yang Giancarlo Guerrero

In concert and recital, Tianwa Yang is winning unprecedented international Giancarlo Guerrero had his first season as music director of the reviews as one of the most impressive young violinists of today. Born in Beijing in Nashville Symphony in 2009/10. He holds degrees from Baylor 1987, she studied the violin from the age of four and at ten was accepted by Lin and Northwestern universities, and was most recently music Yaoji at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Hong Kong media director of the Eugene Symphony. From 1999 to 2004 he served as subsequently described her as “a pride of China.” She was awarded the associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, and prior to his Volkswagen Foundation prize Star of Tomorrow by Seiji Ozawa and the Prix tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra, served as music director of Montblanc 2006. Her mentors are Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn and Anner Bylsma. the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela. As a guest International symphonic débuts have taken her to the United States, Europe, conductor, he has appeared in Europe with the Gulbenkian Singapore, Taiwan and China. In recital, she has performed at the Berlin Orchestra and with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and in Philharmonic Hall and the Wigmore Hall, London. At the age of thirteen, she America with orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony, the recorded the 24 Caprices of Paganini, making her the youngest interpreter of this Cleveland Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles demanding work, and in 2004 she began her collaboration with Naxos, recording Photo: David Bailey Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Dallas Symphony the first two volumes of a seven-volume series devoted to the complete works of Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in addition to appearances with the orchestras of Columbus, Detroit, Sarasate. Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Also in demand in Central and South America, he conducts regularly in Venezuela with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, with which he has had a special relationship for many years.

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Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Sinfonı´a Buenos Aires • Concerto for Bandoneón, period culminated in Sinfonía Buenos Aires (originally true spirit. Piazzolla assumed his tanguero background The central movement reveals Piazzolla — as hemispheric difference, so that Buenos Aires’ Summer String Orchestra and Percussion, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas titled Buenos Aires: Tres Movimientos Sinfonicos). would be dismissed as trivial. Quite the contrary. He composer and performer — at his most intimate, correctly corresponds to Vivaldi’s Italian Winter, and Piazzolla’s score won a contest administered by Fabien played one of his tangos, Triunfal, for her on the piano. beginning with an extensive, soulful solo on the vice versa. Astor Piazzolla’s name has become synonymous with orchestra, led by Aníbal Troilo. Piazzolla acquired Sevitzky (a nephew of Serge Koussevitzky and “When I had finished,” the composer recalls, “she said, bandoneón emphasizing the lyrical intensity of which Autumn starts off with imitative percussion effects tango, the signature dance of his native country, practical experience from countless nights in smoky conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony), which ‘Astor, this is beautiful. Here is the true Piazzolla — do the tango is capable. The movement unfolds as from the soloist and soon brings in the knife-edge Argentina. Like Johann Strauss Jr. with regard to the clubs, but he already had a hankering for innovation — provided a scholarship to study in France. Sevitzky flew not ever leave him.’ It was the great revelation of my introspective night music, with harp, solo violin and glissando swoops that figure so prominently in waltz, Piazzolla transformed a popular idiom into which proved to be a problem during this golden age of to Buenos Aires to conduct the piece in August 1953. musical life.” piano adding evocative touches. The finale begins as a Piazzolla’s tango style. An emotionally florid cadenza sophisticated art music. This recording samples the cabaret tango. Its aficionados tended to be ultra- The audience included a small but vocal group of Boulanger marked a turning point for Piazzolla. The bracing, breathless rondo but takes a surprise turn from the cello reminds us of the reflective state of mind Piazzolla’s orchestral music, which represents just one traditionalists, resistant to any tinkering with the now opponents who shouted disapproval, which Sevitzky validity of his creative engagement with the tango had been midway through. Suddenly, underscored by the güiro, so often associated with autumn. A passing tutti gives facet of a complex, enormously gifted and prolific familiar formulas of tango culture (an irony, considering found encouraging. “I have never seen such fistfights at reaffirmed, and it became the basis for his subsequent the bandoneón begins to bawl a self-pitying monologue way to another cadenza, this time from the violin, which composer, performer and cultural icon whose influence how dramatically the tango had evolved in just a few a première,” the composer recalls him saying, “but classical efforts — rather than an element that had to be and then resolves into a stoic motif, convincing the rewrites the cello solo with its own more capricious continues to be felt across musical genres. We hear decades). relax, this is all publicity.” disguised by overstated classical rhetoric. The bandoneón ensemble to join in. meditations. An angry-sounding reprise of the opening pieces ranging from his more classically oriented Inevitably, Piazzolla stirred up resentment when he The three-movement symphonic triptych displays an represents Piazzolla as the protagonist in his own music, Piazzolla wrote Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas brings a quick end. youthful efforts to mature masterworks in which he began experimenting with new tango hybrids. His impressive sense of confidence in wielding such a large much as the piano did for Mozart or Beethoven. He (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) in separate The emotional range Piazzolla uncovers in the discovered a balance for his creative ambitions. approach was iconoclastic and gave birth to a ensemble, including an important part for the cultivated a distinctive style of playing the instrument as a installments in the late 1960s. Even after he put them tango is truly limitless. Winter begins in a somber mood. The tango is notoriously resistant to simple revolutionary musical movement, dubbed nuevo tango, bandoneón. It begins with bold, brassy gestures that member of his famous quintet and other ensembles. together as a suite whose title referred to Vivaldi’s The violin’s cadenza here seeks to heat the music up definitions. It contains within its hypnotic pulse an which borrowed elements from jazz and classical music sound generic at first, but Piazzolla’s personality soon A member of the concertina family, the bandoneón famous set of four concertos (themselves part of a larger with passion, which leads to an amorous duet with solo amalgam of diverse influences out of Europe and (from the Baroque to contemporaries such as Stravinsky emerges in the tango rhythms and flourishes that become betrays yet another of the tango’s paradoxes. It was cycle), that was just one of the many incarnations in cello. Eventually, a full-on tango breaks out — almost Africa, which were stirred together in the slums and and Bartók). Nuevo tango had greater complexity in part of the fabric. His taste for surprising percussive invented in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth which this music has appeared over the years. The as a challenge, as music from Vivaldi’s Summer storm brothels of Buenos Aires. Immigrant workers within terms of rhythmic patterns, harmonic vocabulary and effects also adds color. Although the musical argument is century as a humble squeezebox, a makeshift organ used composer started with Summer as a stand-alone piece, briefly rages in the background. More Baroque that great port city in the late nineteenth century shaped contrapuntal textures. Piazzolla also began exploring often episodic, fitfully changing topic, the imaginative for worship, but it eventually found its way to the written overnight as theater music to accompany a play references close out this odd tango. Spring kicks off the unmistakable rhythmic gestures, instrumentation longer forms suggested by classical music. Moreover, interplay of textures bears out Piazzolla’s claim that Buenos Aires docks and brothels as part of the emerging and configured for his five-piece tango quintet. The with a wonderfully fugal texture (the very idea of a and general attitude of the tango. It then crossed lines of he bypassed the sacrosanct instrumentation of the Ginastera made orchestration “one of my strong points.” tango culture. The bandoneón was more than a musical adjective porteño refers to “people of the port/harbor,” “tango fugue” is, in a nutshell, typical of Piazzolla’s class and milieu. But the tango has always been defined standard tango orchestra and added electric sounds to The second movement makes wonderful use of instrument for Piazzolla, who compared it to his i.e., the people of Buenos Aires. Unlike Vivaldi’s Four nuevo tango). The luxuriously lyrical middle episode by paradox. It can be heard in the tension between a the acoustic mix. soloistic writing to paint its doleful moods. Piazzolla has psychoanalyst: “I start playing and I blurt everything Seasons, each of which is a three-movement violin mimics the function of the slow interior movement in a strict, tight rhythmic control and the sensuous freedom Piazzolla said that Buenos Aires taught him the clearly picked up some lessons from the Russian classics, out.” He composed the Concerto for Bandoneón, String concerto accompanied by descriptive sonnets, three-movement concerto grosso. Following this comes suggested by the melodic line. Melancholy is countered secrets of the tango. He learned these “in a cold room in too. A delicious clarinet solo provides entrée to a tango- Orchestra and Percussion during one of the most Piazzolla’s pieces are single tango movements that a reprise of the fugal opening spiced with Psycho-like with menace, while genuine passion faces up to a boarding house, in the cabarets in the 1940s, in the driven episode, which is then whipped into a frenzy of creatively exhilarating periods of his life. As with the conjure states of mind. dissonances. A similar shape is found in Summer, with dissembling masquerade. cafés with balconies and orchestras, in the people of Tchaikovskian emotion. Another tempestuous climax ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, the nickname ‘Aconcagua’ is an The posthumous arrangement we hear, however, delirious, languid excursions in the central episode. Tradition and innovation are another paradox yesterday and today, in the sounds of the streets.” But in features prolonged trills out of The Rite of Spring. The invention by a party other than the composer — in this does indulge in a few more Vivaldi references. Most Concluding the cycle is a climax of intense frenzy — inherent in the tango as Piazzolla came to experience it. addition he singled out two great teachers from the music returns to its sad, stepwise melody before Piazzolla case, Piazzolla’s publisher, Aldo Pagani, who importantly, Leonid Desyatnikov reconfigured the the tango as erotic duel. The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, he moved classical world: Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera. concludes his symphonic vision of Buenos Aires with a posthumously tacked the name on; it refers to the music for solo violin; he also added explicit quotations with his parents to New York City, where he had a What he learned from Ginastera is particularly Presto marcato of thrilling, fiery momentum. Here he is highest Andean peak. in Summer and Winter, playfully alluding to the Thomas May streetwise upbringing in Little Italy. As a young boy, evident in Sinfonía Buenos Aires. In 1941 Piazzolla most successful at integrating the rhythmic elements that The score omits woodwinds and brass, creating an Piazzolla had little interest in the music from back home began a period of five years of private study with predominate in the work, bringing it to a close with a ideal balance for the soloist. The first movement begins until, at the age of eight, his tango-loving father bought Ginastera, who lived across town in Buenos Aires, on convincingly sustained climax. with bold determination — a more mature refinement of him a bandoneón, or button accordion, at a pawn shop. the recommendation of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Such all-out symphonism turned out to be a dead the similar procedure launching the Sinfonía Buenos The young Piazzolla fed his growing interest in classical Ginastera, only five years older, would develop a end for Piazzolla. His year of study with Nadia Aires. The ensemble writing is dramatic and neatly music while becoming a prodigy on the instrument. In reputation as one of Argentina’s leading twentieth- Boulanger in 1954 led to an epiphany. The legendary articulated. Piazzolla also makes space for intimate 1936, while he was still a teenager, the family returned century composers. This is when Piazzolla began composition teacher knew only of her new student’s dalliances between the soloist and orchestra, and for to Argentina, and before he was twenty Piazzolla was writing his most overtly classical pieces — on a parallel classical ambitions, and she judged the pieces he had elaborate cadenzas in the center, before the opening already playing in Buenos Aires’ top-notch tango track with his tango orchestra pieces. This classical shown her well constructed but somehow disguising his material returns.

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Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Sinfonı´a Buenos Aires • Concerto for Bandoneón, period culminated in Sinfonía Buenos Aires (originally true spirit. Piazzolla assumed his tanguero background The central movement reveals Piazzolla — as hemispheric difference, so that Buenos Aires’ Summer String Orchestra and Percussion, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas titled Buenos Aires: Tres Movimientos Sinfonicos). would be dismissed as trivial. Quite the contrary. He composer and performer — at his most intimate, correctly corresponds to Vivaldi’s Italian Winter, and Piazzolla’s score won a contest administered by Fabien played one of his tangos, Triunfal, for her on the piano. beginning with an extensive, soulful solo on the vice versa. Astor Piazzolla’s name has become synonymous with orchestra, led by Aníbal Troilo. Piazzolla acquired Sevitzky (a nephew of Serge Koussevitzky and “When I had finished,” the composer recalls, “she said, bandoneón emphasizing the lyrical intensity of which Autumn starts off with imitative percussion effects tango, the signature dance of his native country, practical experience from countless nights in smoky conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony), which ‘Astor, this is beautiful. Here is the true Piazzolla — do the tango is capable. The movement unfolds as from the soloist and soon brings in the knife-edge Argentina. Like Johann Strauss Jr. with regard to the clubs, but he already had a hankering for innovation — provided a scholarship to study in France. Sevitzky flew not ever leave him.’ It was the great revelation of my introspective night music, with harp, solo violin and glissando swoops that figure so prominently in waltz, Piazzolla transformed a popular idiom into which proved to be a problem during this golden age of to Buenos Aires to conduct the piece in August 1953. musical life.” piano adding evocative touches. The finale begins as a Piazzolla’s tango style. An emotionally florid cadenza sophisticated art music. This recording samples the cabaret tango. Its aficionados tended to be ultra- The audience included a small but vocal group of Boulanger marked a turning point for Piazzolla. The bracing, breathless rondo but takes a surprise turn from the cello reminds us of the reflective state of mind Piazzolla’s orchestral music, which represents just one traditionalists, resistant to any tinkering with the now opponents who shouted disapproval, which Sevitzky validity of his creative engagement with the tango had been midway through. Suddenly, underscored by the güiro, so often associated with autumn. A passing tutti gives facet of a complex, enormously gifted and prolific familiar formulas of tango culture (an irony, considering found encouraging. “I have never seen such fistfights at reaffirmed, and it became the basis for his subsequent the bandoneón begins to bawl a self-pitying monologue way to another cadenza, this time from the violin, which composer, performer and cultural icon whose influence how dramatically the tango had evolved in just a few a première,” the composer recalls him saying, “but classical efforts — rather than an element that had to be and then resolves into a stoic motif, convincing the rewrites the cello solo with its own more capricious continues to be felt across musical genres. We hear decades). relax, this is all publicity.” disguised by overstated classical rhetoric. The bandoneón ensemble to join in. meditations. An angry-sounding reprise of the opening pieces ranging from his more classically oriented Inevitably, Piazzolla stirred up resentment when he The three-movement symphonic triptych displays an represents Piazzolla as the protagonist in his own music, Piazzolla wrote Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas brings a quick end. youthful efforts to mature masterworks in which he began experimenting with new tango hybrids. His impressive sense of confidence in wielding such a large much as the piano did for Mozart or Beethoven. He (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) in separate The emotional range Piazzolla uncovers in the discovered a balance for his creative ambitions. approach was iconoclastic and gave birth to a ensemble, including an important part for the cultivated a distinctive style of playing the instrument as a installments in the late 1960s. Even after he put them tango is truly limitless. Winter begins in a somber mood. The tango is notoriously resistant to simple revolutionary musical movement, dubbed nuevo tango, bandoneón. It begins with bold, brassy gestures that member of his famous quintet and other ensembles. together as a suite whose title referred to Vivaldi’s The violin’s cadenza here seeks to heat the music up definitions. It contains within its hypnotic pulse an which borrowed elements from jazz and classical music sound generic at first, but Piazzolla’s personality soon A member of the concertina family, the bandoneón famous set of four concertos (themselves part of a larger with passion, which leads to an amorous duet with solo amalgam of diverse influences out of Europe and (from the Baroque to contemporaries such as Stravinsky emerges in the tango rhythms and flourishes that become betrays yet another of the tango’s paradoxes. It was cycle), that was just one of the many incarnations in cello. Eventually, a full-on tango breaks out — almost Africa, which were stirred together in the slums and and Bartók). Nuevo tango had greater complexity in part of the fabric. His taste for surprising percussive invented in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth which this music has appeared over the years. The as a challenge, as music from Vivaldi’s Summer storm brothels of Buenos Aires. Immigrant workers within terms of rhythmic patterns, harmonic vocabulary and effects also adds color. Although the musical argument is century as a humble squeezebox, a makeshift organ used composer started with Summer as a stand-alone piece, briefly rages in the background. More Baroque that great port city in the late nineteenth century shaped contrapuntal textures. Piazzolla also began exploring often episodic, fitfully changing topic, the imaginative for worship, but it eventually found its way to the written overnight as theater music to accompany a play references close out this odd tango. Spring kicks off the unmistakable rhythmic gestures, instrumentation longer forms suggested by classical music. Moreover, interplay of textures bears out Piazzolla’s claim that Buenos Aires docks and brothels as part of the emerging and configured for his five-piece tango quintet. The with a wonderfully fugal texture (the very idea of a and general attitude of the tango. It then crossed lines of he bypassed the sacrosanct instrumentation of the Ginastera made orchestration “one of my strong points.” tango culture. The bandoneón was more than a musical adjective porteño refers to “people of the port/harbor,” “tango fugue” is, in a nutshell, typical of Piazzolla’s class and milieu. But the tango has always been defined standard tango orchestra and added electric sounds to The second movement makes wonderful use of instrument for Piazzolla, who compared it to his i.e., the people of Buenos Aires. Unlike Vivaldi’s Four nuevo tango). The luxuriously lyrical middle episode by paradox. It can be heard in the tension between a the acoustic mix. soloistic writing to paint its doleful moods. Piazzolla has psychoanalyst: “I start playing and I blurt everything Seasons, each of which is a three-movement violin mimics the function of the slow interior movement in a strict, tight rhythmic control and the sensuous freedom Piazzolla said that Buenos Aires taught him the clearly picked up some lessons from the Russian classics, out.” He composed the Concerto for Bandoneón, String concerto accompanied by descriptive sonnets, three-movement concerto grosso. Following this comes suggested by the melodic line. Melancholy is countered secrets of the tango. He learned these “in a cold room in too. A delicious clarinet solo provides entrée to a tango- Orchestra and Percussion during one of the most Piazzolla’s pieces are single tango movements that a reprise of the fugal opening spiced with Psycho-like with menace, while genuine passion faces up to a boarding house, in the cabarets in the 1940s, in the driven episode, which is then whipped into a frenzy of creatively exhilarating periods of his life. As with the conjure states of mind. dissonances. A similar shape is found in Summer, with dissembling masquerade. cafés with balconies and orchestras, in the people of Tchaikovskian emotion. Another tempestuous climax ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, the nickname ‘Aconcagua’ is an The posthumous arrangement we hear, however, delirious, languid excursions in the central episode. Tradition and innovation are another paradox yesterday and today, in the sounds of the streets.” But in features prolonged trills out of The Rite of Spring. The invention by a party other than the composer — in this does indulge in a few more Vivaldi references. Most Concluding the cycle is a climax of intense frenzy — inherent in the tango as Piazzolla came to experience it. addition he singled out two great teachers from the music returns to its sad, stepwise melody before Piazzolla case, Piazzolla’s publisher, Aldo Pagani, who importantly, Leonid Desyatnikov reconfigured the the tango as erotic duel. The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, he moved classical world: Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera. concludes his symphonic vision of Buenos Aires with a posthumously tacked the name on; it refers to the music for solo violin; he also added explicit quotations with his parents to New York City, where he had a What he learned from Ginastera is particularly Presto marcato of thrilling, fiery momentum. Here he is highest Andean peak. in Summer and Winter, playfully alluding to the Thomas May streetwise upbringing in Little Italy. As a young boy, evident in Sinfonía Buenos Aires. In 1941 Piazzolla most successful at integrating the rhythmic elements that The score omits woodwinds and brass, creating an Piazzolla had little interest in the music from back home began a period of five years of private study with predominate in the work, bringing it to a close with a ideal balance for the soloist. The first movement begins until, at the age of eight, his tango-loving father bought Ginastera, who lived across town in Buenos Aires, on convincingly sustained climax. with bold determination — a more mature refinement of him a bandoneón, or button accordion, at a pawn shop. the recommendation of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Such all-out symphonism turned out to be a dead the similar procedure launching the Sinfonía Buenos The young Piazzolla fed his growing interest in classical Ginastera, only five years older, would develop a end for Piazzolla. His year of study with Nadia Aires. The ensemble writing is dramatic and neatly music while becoming a prodigy on the instrument. In reputation as one of Argentina’s leading twentieth- Boulanger in 1954 led to an epiphany. The legendary articulated. Piazzolla also makes space for intimate 1936, while he was still a teenager, the family returned century composers. This is when Piazzolla began composition teacher knew only of her new student’s dalliances between the soloist and orchestra, and for to Argentina, and before he was twenty Piazzolla was writing his most overtly classical pieces — on a parallel classical ambitions, and she judged the pieces he had elaborate cadenzas in the center, before the opening already playing in Buenos Aires’ top-notch tango track with his tango orchestra pieces. This classical shown her well constructed but somehow disguising his material returns.

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Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Sinfonı´a Buenos Aires • Concerto for Bandoneón, period culminated in Sinfonía Buenos Aires (originally true spirit. Piazzolla assumed his tanguero background The central movement reveals Piazzolla — as hemispheric difference, so that Buenos Aires’ Summer String Orchestra and Percussion, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas titled Buenos Aires: Tres Movimientos Sinfonicos). would be dismissed as trivial. Quite the contrary. He composer and performer — at his most intimate, correctly corresponds to Vivaldi’s Italian Winter, and Piazzolla’s score won a contest administered by Fabien played one of his tangos, Triunfal, for her on the piano. beginning with an extensive, soulful solo on the vice versa. Astor Piazzolla’s name has become synonymous with orchestra, led by Aníbal Troilo. Piazzolla acquired Sevitzky (a nephew of Serge Koussevitzky and “When I had finished,” the composer recalls, “she said, bandoneón emphasizing the lyrical intensity of which Autumn starts off with imitative percussion effects tango, the signature dance of his native country, practical experience from countless nights in smoky conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony), which ‘Astor, this is beautiful. Here is the true Piazzolla — do the tango is capable. The movement unfolds as from the soloist and soon brings in the knife-edge Argentina. Like Johann Strauss Jr. with regard to the clubs, but he already had a hankering for innovation — provided a scholarship to study in France. Sevitzky flew not ever leave him.’ It was the great revelation of my introspective night music, with harp, solo violin and glissando swoops that figure so prominently in waltz, Piazzolla transformed a popular idiom into which proved to be a problem during this golden age of to Buenos Aires to conduct the piece in August 1953. musical life.” piano adding evocative touches. The finale begins as a Piazzolla’s tango style. An emotionally florid cadenza sophisticated art music. This recording samples the cabaret tango. Its aficionados tended to be ultra- The audience included a small but vocal group of Boulanger marked a turning point for Piazzolla. The bracing, breathless rondo but takes a surprise turn from the cello reminds us of the reflective state of mind Piazzolla’s orchestral music, which represents just one traditionalists, resistant to any tinkering with the now opponents who shouted disapproval, which Sevitzky validity of his creative engagement with the tango had been midway through. Suddenly, underscored by the güiro, so often associated with autumn. A passing tutti gives facet of a complex, enormously gifted and prolific familiar formulas of tango culture (an irony, considering found encouraging. “I have never seen such fistfights at reaffirmed, and it became the basis for his subsequent the bandoneón begins to bawl a self-pitying monologue way to another cadenza, this time from the violin, which composer, performer and cultural icon whose influence how dramatically the tango had evolved in just a few a première,” the composer recalls him saying, “but classical efforts — rather than an element that had to be and then resolves into a stoic motif, convincing the rewrites the cello solo with its own more capricious continues to be felt across musical genres. We hear decades). relax, this is all publicity.” disguised by overstated classical rhetoric. The bandoneón ensemble to join in. meditations. An angry-sounding reprise of the opening pieces ranging from his more classically oriented Inevitably, Piazzolla stirred up resentment when he The three-movement symphonic triptych displays an represents Piazzolla as the protagonist in his own music, Piazzolla wrote Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas brings a quick end. youthful efforts to mature masterworks in which he began experimenting with new tango hybrids. His impressive sense of confidence in wielding such a large much as the piano did for Mozart or Beethoven. He (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) in separate The emotional range Piazzolla uncovers in the discovered a balance for his creative ambitions. approach was iconoclastic and gave birth to a ensemble, including an important part for the cultivated a distinctive style of playing the instrument as a installments in the late 1960s. Even after he put them tango is truly limitless. Winter begins in a somber mood. The tango is notoriously resistant to simple revolutionary musical movement, dubbed nuevo tango, bandoneón. It begins with bold, brassy gestures that member of his famous quintet and other ensembles. together as a suite whose title referred to Vivaldi’s The violin’s cadenza here seeks to heat the music up definitions. It contains within its hypnotic pulse an which borrowed elements from jazz and classical music sound generic at first, but Piazzolla’s personality soon A member of the concertina family, the bandoneón famous set of four concertos (themselves part of a larger with passion, which leads to an amorous duet with solo amalgam of diverse influences out of Europe and (from the Baroque to contemporaries such as Stravinsky emerges in the tango rhythms and flourishes that become betrays yet another of the tango’s paradoxes. It was cycle), that was just one of the many incarnations in cello. Eventually, a full-on tango breaks out — almost Africa, which were stirred together in the slums and and Bartók). Nuevo tango had greater complexity in part of the fabric. His taste for surprising percussive invented in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth which this music has appeared over the years. The as a challenge, as music from Vivaldi’s Summer storm brothels of Buenos Aires. Immigrant workers within terms of rhythmic patterns, harmonic vocabulary and effects also adds color. Although the musical argument is century as a humble squeezebox, a makeshift organ used composer started with Summer as a stand-alone piece, briefly rages in the background. More Baroque that great port city in the late nineteenth century shaped contrapuntal textures. Piazzolla also began exploring often episodic, fitfully changing topic, the imaginative for worship, but it eventually found its way to the written overnight as theater music to accompany a play references close out this odd tango. Spring kicks off the unmistakable rhythmic gestures, instrumentation longer forms suggested by classical music. Moreover, interplay of textures bears out Piazzolla’s claim that Buenos Aires docks and brothels as part of the emerging and configured for his five-piece tango quintet. The with a wonderfully fugal texture (the very idea of a and general attitude of the tango. It then crossed lines of he bypassed the sacrosanct instrumentation of the Ginastera made orchestration “one of my strong points.” tango culture. The bandoneón was more than a musical adjective porteño refers to “people of the port/harbor,” “tango fugue” is, in a nutshell, typical of Piazzolla’s class and milieu. But the tango has always been defined standard tango orchestra and added electric sounds to The second movement makes wonderful use of instrument for Piazzolla, who compared it to his i.e., the people of Buenos Aires. Unlike Vivaldi’s Four nuevo tango). The luxuriously lyrical middle episode by paradox. It can be heard in the tension between a the acoustic mix. soloistic writing to paint its doleful moods. Piazzolla has psychoanalyst: “I start playing and I blurt everything Seasons, each of which is a three-movement violin mimics the function of the slow interior movement in a strict, tight rhythmic control and the sensuous freedom Piazzolla said that Buenos Aires taught him the clearly picked up some lessons from the Russian classics, out.” He composed the Concerto for Bandoneón, String concerto accompanied by descriptive sonnets, three-movement concerto grosso. Following this comes suggested by the melodic line. Melancholy is countered secrets of the tango. He learned these “in a cold room in too. A delicious clarinet solo provides entrée to a tango- Orchestra and Percussion during one of the most Piazzolla’s pieces are single tango movements that a reprise of the fugal opening spiced with Psycho-like with menace, while genuine passion faces up to a boarding house, in the cabarets in the 1940s, in the driven episode, which is then whipped into a frenzy of creatively exhilarating periods of his life. As with the conjure states of mind. dissonances. A similar shape is found in Summer, with dissembling masquerade. cafés with balconies and orchestras, in the people of Tchaikovskian emotion. Another tempestuous climax ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, the nickname ‘Aconcagua’ is an The posthumous arrangement we hear, however, delirious, languid excursions in the central episode. Tradition and innovation are another paradox yesterday and today, in the sounds of the streets.” But in features prolonged trills out of The Rite of Spring. The invention by a party other than the composer — in this does indulge in a few more Vivaldi references. Most Concluding the cycle is a climax of intense frenzy — inherent in the tango as Piazzolla came to experience it. addition he singled out two great teachers from the music returns to its sad, stepwise melody before Piazzolla case, Piazzolla’s publisher, Aldo Pagani, who importantly, Leonid Desyatnikov reconfigured the the tango as erotic duel. The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, he moved classical world: Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera. concludes his symphonic vision of Buenos Aires with a posthumously tacked the name on; it refers to the music for solo violin; he also added explicit quotations with his parents to New York City, where he had a What he learned from Ginastera is particularly Presto marcato of thrilling, fiery momentum. Here he is highest Andean peak. in Summer and Winter, playfully alluding to the Thomas May streetwise upbringing in Little Italy. As a young boy, evident in Sinfonía Buenos Aires. In 1941 Piazzolla most successful at integrating the rhythmic elements that The score omits woodwinds and brass, creating an Piazzolla had little interest in the music from back home began a period of five years of private study with predominate in the work, bringing it to a close with a ideal balance for the soloist. The first movement begins until, at the age of eight, his tango-loving father bought Ginastera, who lived across town in Buenos Aires, on convincingly sustained climax. with bold determination — a more mature refinement of him a bandoneón, or button accordion, at a pawn shop. the recommendation of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Such all-out symphonism turned out to be a dead the similar procedure launching the Sinfonía Buenos The young Piazzolla fed his growing interest in classical Ginastera, only five years older, would develop a end for Piazzolla. His year of study with Nadia Aires. The ensemble writing is dramatic and neatly music while becoming a prodigy on the instrument. In reputation as one of Argentina’s leading twentieth- Boulanger in 1954 led to an epiphany. The legendary articulated. Piazzolla also makes space for intimate 1936, while he was still a teenager, the family returned century composers. This is when Piazzolla began composition teacher knew only of her new student’s dalliances between the soloist and orchestra, and for to Argentina, and before he was twenty Piazzolla was writing his most overtly classical pieces — on a parallel classical ambitions, and she judged the pieces he had elaborate cadenzas in the center, before the opening already playing in Buenos Aires’ top-notch tango track with his tango orchestra pieces. This classical shown her well constructed but somehow disguising his material returns.

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Daniel Binelli Nashville Symphony Internationally renowned as a master of the bandoneón, Argentine Daniel Binelli The GRAMMY® Award- PIAZZOLLA tours extensively in concert and recital, performing a wide range of compositions, winning Nashville Symphony many of which have roots in the tango of Binelli’s native land, where he is known has a growing international as an expert of the form. A seasoned composer in his own right, Binelli worked on reputation for its recordings and arrangements in the orchestra of Osvaldo Pugliese. He is also widely acclaimed as innovative programming. With Sinfonía Buenos Aires the foremost exponent and now torch-bearer of the music of Astor Piazzolla, a 140 performances annually, the

Photo: Peter Schaaf legacy acquired after the two toured internationally with the New Tango Sextet 82-member orchestra is an arts Bandoneón Concerto, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas before Piazzolla’s death in 1992. Orchestras with which Binelli has appeared as leader in Nashville and beyond, guest soloist include The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta offering a broad range of Symphony, Montréal Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Tokyo, Mexico City Photo: Harry Butler classical, pops and jazz concerts, Daniel Binelli, Bandoneón • Tianwa Yang, Violin Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Teatro Colón Orchestra special events, children’s concerts and community outreach programs. As a national and international ambassador of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra for the citizens of Tennessee, the Nashville Symphony has received far-reaching acclaim for its numerous Nashville Symphony Orchestra • Giancarlo Guerrero of Caracas and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In modern jazz and contemporary recordings on Naxos, making the ensemble one of the most active recording orchestras in the country. These music, Binelli has played with Paquito de Rivera and the Dizzy Gillespie recordings have received eight total GRAMMY® nominations and, in 2008, three GRAMMY® Awards for Made in Orchestra, Andreas Vollenweider, Lalo Schifrin, Michael Brecker and Gary America, a recording of works by American composer Joan Tower. Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the new home Burton. He frequently collaborates with TangoMetropolis, a complete tango of the Nashville Symphony, opened in September 2006 to critical acclaim. This new cultural center in downtown ensemble of which he is music director. He is also widely known for his Nashville has had a significant artistic, social and economic impact on the city, and has given the Nashville contributions to film music. Symphony a venue equal to its growing reputation.

Tianwa Yang Giancarlo Guerrero

In concert and recital, Tianwa Yang is winning unprecedented international Giancarlo Guerrero had his first season as music director of the reviews as one of the most impressive young violinists of today. Born in Beijing in Nashville Symphony in 2009/10. He holds degrees from Baylor 1987, she studied the violin from the age of four and at ten was accepted by Lin and Northwestern universities, and was most recently music Yaoji at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Hong Kong media director of the Eugene Symphony. From 1999 to 2004 he served as subsequently described her as “a pride of China.” She was awarded the associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, and prior to his Volkswagen Foundation prize Star of Tomorrow by Seiji Ozawa and the Prix tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra, served as music director of Montblanc 2006. Her mentors are Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn and Anner Bylsma. the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela. As a guest International symphonic débuts have taken her to the United States, Europe, conductor, he has appeared in Europe with the Gulbenkian Singapore, Taiwan and China. In recital, she has performed at the Berlin Orchestra and with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and in Philharmonic Hall and the Wigmore Hall, London. At the age of thirteen, she America with orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony, the recorded the 24 Caprices of Paganini, making her the youngest interpreter of this Cleveland Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles demanding work, and in 2004 she began her collaboration with Naxos, recording Photo: David Bailey Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Dallas Symphony the first two volumes of a seven-volume series devoted to the complete works of Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in addition to appearances with the orchestras of Columbus, Detroit, Sarasate. Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Also in demand in Central and South America, he conducts regularly in Venezuela with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, with which he has had a special relationship for many years.

8.572271 5 6 8.572271 572271 bk Piazzolla 23/6/10 10:12 Page 5

Daniel Binelli Nashville Symphony Internationally renowned as a master of the bandoneón, Argentine Daniel Binelli The GRAMMY® Award- PIAZZOLLA tours extensively in concert and recital, performing a wide range of compositions, winning Nashville Symphony many of which have roots in the tango of Binelli’s native land, where he is known has a growing international as an expert of the form. A seasoned composer in his own right, Binelli worked on reputation for its recordings and arrangements in the orchestra of Osvaldo Pugliese. He is also widely acclaimed as innovative programming. With Sinfonía Buenos Aires the foremost exponent and now torch-bearer of the music of Astor Piazzolla, a 140 performances annually, the

Photo: Peter Schaaf legacy acquired after the two toured internationally with the New Tango Sextet 82-member orchestra is an arts Bandoneón Concerto, ‘Aconcagua’ • Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas before Piazzolla’s death in 1992. Orchestras with which Binelli has appeared as leader in Nashville and beyond, guest soloist include The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta offering a broad range of Symphony, Montréal Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Tokyo, Mexico City Photo: Harry Butler classical, pops and jazz concerts, Daniel Binelli, Bandoneón • Tianwa Yang, Violin Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Teatro Colón Orchestra special events, children’s concerts and community outreach programs. As a national and international ambassador of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra for the citizens of Tennessee, the Nashville Symphony has received far-reaching acclaim for its numerous Nashville Symphony Orchestra • Giancarlo Guerrero of Caracas and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In modern jazz and contemporary recordings on Naxos, making the ensemble one of the most active recording orchestras in the country. These music, Binelli has played with Paquito de Rivera and the Dizzy Gillespie recordings have received eight total GRAMMY® nominations and, in 2008, three GRAMMY® Awards for Made in Orchestra, Andreas Vollenweider, Lalo Schifrin, Michael Brecker and Gary America, a recording of works by American composer Joan Tower. Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the new home Burton. He frequently collaborates with TangoMetropolis, a complete tango of the Nashville Symphony, opened in September 2006 to critical acclaim. This new cultural center in downtown ensemble of which he is music director. He is also widely known for his Nashville has had a significant artistic, social and economic impact on the city, and has given the Nashville contributions to film music. Symphony a venue equal to its growing reputation.

Tianwa Yang Giancarlo Guerrero

In concert and recital, Tianwa Yang is winning unprecedented international Giancarlo Guerrero had his first season as music director of the reviews as one of the most impressive young violinists of today. Born in Beijing in Nashville Symphony in 2009/10. He holds degrees from Baylor 1987, she studied the violin from the age of four and at ten was accepted by Lin and Northwestern universities, and was most recently music Yaoji at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Hong Kong media director of the Eugene Symphony. From 1999 to 2004 he served as subsequently described her as “a pride of China.” She was awarded the associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, and prior to his Volkswagen Foundation prize Star of Tomorrow by Seiji Ozawa and the Prix tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra, served as music director of Montblanc 2006. Her mentors are Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn and Anner Bylsma. the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela. As a guest International symphonic débuts have taken her to the United States, Europe, conductor, he has appeared in Europe with the Gulbenkian Singapore, Taiwan and China. In recital, she has performed at the Berlin Orchestra and with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and in Philharmonic Hall and the Wigmore Hall, London. At the age of thirteen, she America with orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony, the recorded the 24 Caprices of Paganini, making her the youngest interpreter of this Cleveland Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles demanding work, and in 2004 she began her collaboration with Naxos, recording Photo: David Bailey Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Dallas Symphony the first two volumes of a seven-volume series devoted to the complete works of Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in addition to appearances with the orchestras of Columbus, Detroit, Sarasate. Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Also in demand in Central and South America, he conducts regularly in Venezuela with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, with which he has had a special relationship for many years.

8.572271 5 6 8.572271 CMYK

L A T Also available I N

A M E R I C 8.555721 8.557582 A N

C L A S

S 8.570523 8.570999 I C S NAXOS NAXOS Astor Piazzolla’s name has become synonymous with tango, the signature dance of his native country, Argentina. In the Sinfonía Buenos Aires, Piazzolla’s development of symphonic tango is notable for brilliant, original and often complex orchestration. His Bandoneón Concerto, nicknamed ‘Aconcagua’ after the highest Andean mountain, provides the soloist with ample opportunities for drama, pathos and virtuosity. Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four 8.572271 PIAZZOLLA: Seasons of Buenos Aires), a series of single tango movements with several references to Vivaldi’s PIAZZOLLA: famous work, is a vivid sequence in which the changing moods of the seasons are expressed by DDD means of an almost limitless emotional range and depth. Astor Playing Time PIAZZOLLA 79:38 (1921-1992)

Sinfonía Buenos Aires Sinfonía Buenos Aires, Op. 15 (1951)* 26:20 Sinfonía Buenos Aires 1 I. Moderato – Allegretto 8:36 2 II. Lento, con anima 8:47 3 III. Presto marcato 8:58 Concerto for Bandoneón, String Orchestra and Percussion, ‘Aconcagua’ (1979)* 24:58 4 I. Allegro marcato 9:02

5 II. Moderato 8:26 www.naxos.com Disc made in Canada. Printed and assembled USA. Booklet notes in English ൿ

6 III. Presto 7:30 &

Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (1964-70)** 28:20 Ꭿ

(arr. Leonid Desyatnikov for violin and strings) 2010 Naxos Rights International Ltd. 7 Otoño Porteño (Autumn) 7:28 8 Invierno Porteño (Winter) 8:08 9 Primavera Porteña (Spring) 6:10 0 Verano Porteño (Summer) 6:34 Daniel Binelli, Bandoneón* • Tianwa Yang, Violin** Nashville Symphony Orchestra • Giancarlo Guerrero 8.572271 Recorded at Laura Turner Concert Hall, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 8.572271 Nashville, Tennessee, USA, on 21st and 22nd November, 2009 Produced, engineered and edited by Tim Handley • Booklet notes: Thomas May Publishers: Editorial Saraceno (Argentina) (tracks 1-3); Tonos Music (Germany) (tracks 4-10) Cover: La Boca, Buenos Aires by Valentin Casarsa (iStockphoto.com)