ÁSTOR PIAZZOLLA – GENIUS OF TANGO Elmira Darvarova, violin Howard Wall, horn Thomas Weaver, piano AF2003 ÁSTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) was the foremost composer and ambassador of tango music, who made it his Having collaborated for several years with the late great tango pianist Octavio Brunetti (hailed by the New York life mission to bring the signature music genre of Argentina from the dance halls and clubs onto the concert stages Philharmonic as “the inheritor of Piazzolla’s mantle” on the occasion of that orchestra’s commissioning of Brunetti’s around the world. Piazzolla’s biographer María Susana Azzi defines Piazzolla as transcending all musical boundaries. arrangement of Piazzolla’s “Angel Suite” for Yo-Yo Ma and the Philharmonic’s strings), I embraced Piazzolla’s music An extremely hard-working creative genius, Piazzolla not only constantly performed throughout his life (from his first through the violin and piano transcriptions Octavio Brunetti created for the two of us from the original Piazzolla public appearance at age 11 in the Roerich Hall on Riverside Drive in New York City, to his last concert in Greece 58 scores. Performing and recording music by Piazzolla with Octavio Brunetti was one of the highlights of my career as years later), but he was also one of the most prolific composers ever, writing over 3000 works (including more than 60 a concert violinist, and it is very rewarding to continue to relate to Piazzolla’s oeuvre through further projects, in the film scores), and collaborating with some of the greatest musicians of our time, including Dizzy Gillespie and Mstislav quest to re-imagine and re-interpret the supreme beauty and passion that has been gifted to humanity by Piazzolla’s Rostropovich. So invested was Piazzolla in his dual (and dueling) identities - as a highly productive composer, and as genius. The arrangements on this album (mostly created by us, the performers, and presenting several world- a wildly busy performer, that in 1970 he had to reject an invitation to compose the film score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s premiere recordings of transcriptions which involve the horn) also include three of Octavio Brunetti’s transcriptions “Last Tango in Paris”, due to upcoming appearances at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. for violin and piano, in honor of his memory. Born in Argentina, Piazzolla spent the crucially formative years of his childhood in New York City. Becoming a Invierno Porteño is part of the popular set of four tangos bearing the titles of the seasons and widely known as Las virtuoso on the bandoneón (since the age of 8) and studying with the pianist living next door on East 9th Street (a Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires), where the word Porteño refers to Buenos Aires as pupil of Rachmaninoff), he soaked up music influences from baroque to Bartók and jazz, and absorbed Klezmer a port city. Composed in the late 1960s, the four installments of this cycle were originally written as stand-alone rhythms from Jewish weddings (later encoded in his fundamental 3-3-2 rhythmical combination). While fascinated pieces, not initially conceived as an entire suite. Piazzolla performed them sometimes as a set, but mostly as separate with jazz and mesmerized by Bach’s music (which he interpreted with his bandoneón), the teen-aged Piazzolla also entities. Contemporary ensembles everywhere avail themselves of the lately fashionable practice to juxtapose, constantly listened to the records of the tango icons Carlos Gardel, Julio de Caro and Elvino Vardaro. At age 13 in numerous concert programs, Piazzolla’s Four Seasons set with that of Antonio Vivaldi. Of the four Piazzolla Piazzolla met Carlos Gardel, which led to a cameo appearance in a Gardel tango film, but associating with Gardel “Seasons”, it is his Invierno Porteño (Winter) that bears the most traces of “vivaldiesque” influence, especially in the almost cost Piazzolla his life, as he was supposed to join Gardel on the tour where Gardel died in a plane crash closing coda which has unmistakably baroque tunes. Our transcription, which also includes horn, is presented on (fortunately for Piazzolla, his father had not let him go on that tour). While still a teenager, Piazzolla joined Anibal this album as a world-premiere recording of this arrangement, which we have performed at prestigious venues on Troilo’s high-profile tango orchestra as bandoneón player and arranger. Not satisfied with the traditional tango two continents, including at Carnegie Hall. legacy of earlier generations, Piazzolla was propelled by his eclectic background and versatile tastes, which urged him to strive for a different direction. On the recommendation of legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein (who also Michelangelo ’70, heard on this album in Octavio Brunetti’s violin and piano transcription from the original encouraged the career paths of other fabulous talents, including the violinist Henryk Szeryng), Piazzolla studied Piazzolla score, is titled after the name of a Buenos Aires café where the composer’s quintet performed in the 1970s. composition with Alberto Ginastera for five years, immersing himself in the scores of Stravinsky, Bartók and Ravel, Based on a repeated ostinato motif of three consecutive notes, it is a very exciting composition, perfectly timed in its mastering orchestration and winning a competition with a symphonic work. Anticipating a classical composer’s short duration to leave the listener exhilarated and addicted to its breathless pace, wishing it had lasted longer. career, Piazzolla traveled to Paris (on a grant from the French Government) where he sought guidance from the world-renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. She admired Piazzolla’s tango compositions and convinced him Café 1930 is part of Piazzolla’s 1986 “Histoire du Tango”, where Piazzolla programmatically depicts how the process of to stay true to his own distinct Argentine-rooted style. Abandoning other compositional ambitions, Piazzolla revolutionizing the tango unfolded, conveyed in four 30-year intervals, progressing from the bordellos of the 1900s, dedicated himself to the development of his Nuevo Tango as a contemporary music genre, incorporating traditional through the cafés in the 1930s, the nightclubs in the 1960s, and finally arriving at today’s concert halls. In his own and complex contrapuntal techniques adapted from classical music (mainly baroque), but also fused with angular program note to “Café 1930”, Piazzolla states: “This is another age of the tango. People stopped dancing it as they did jazz elements and gritty urban sounds, dissonance, metric shifts, complex counterpoint, juxtaposed to heart- in 1900, preferring instead simply to listen to it. It became more musical, and more romantic. This tango has undergone wrenching melodic material in the vein of Puccini’s operas. In 1955 Piazzolla wrote his revolutionary manifesto total transformation: the movements are slower, with new and often melancholy harmonies.” Originally composed for “Decalogue”, setting standards and principles for his emerging Nuevo Tango style, treating all musicians as soloists, flute (or violin) and guitar, this piece was transcribed by us for violin and horn, transforming the beginning of it into a introducing new instruments in the tango formation (including saxophone and electric guitar). Turning his back violin solo, abounding with baroque chords. Upon the entry of the horn with the main theme, the violin chords from on established tradition, Piazzolla strived to impose the performance of tango as chamber music (as opposed to just the opening solo return but not as a cadenza – they serve as a counterpoint to the horn melody. accompaniment to dancers or vocalists), in his life-long mission to elevate the tango genre to a form to be listened “Café 1930” was previously included by Elmira Darvarova and Howard Wall on their CD album “Music from Five Centuries: 17th C. - 21st C.” (Affetto AF 2001). to on concert stages, music to be paid attention to and focused on exclusively, without the element of the dancers‘ embrace. Nuevo Tango fused a trinity of cultural backgrounds which Piazzolla strived to reconcile and merge: the Fugata is another baroque-inspired composition, starting as a bona-fide, polyphonically textured, fugue, but despite legacies of tango, jazz, and classical music, but these innovations spelled a departure from the classical tango style its relatively short duration managing to undergo a structural transfiguration into an accompanied melody, and that had been a proud source of national identity. At the time, the tango purists in Argentina were incensed at such ending as a catchy playful tune that can be casually whistled. Fugata is the second part of the “Silfo y Ondina” suite radical changes. The severe criticism, hostility and resistance by some conservative tango aficionados expanded (following Tangata and preceding Soledad, two of Piazzolla’s most heart-rending masterpieces). The “Silfo y Ondina” Piazzolla’s breaking of a musical paradigm into a political controversy. Piazzolla received death threats. Even the cycle was created by Piazzolla in 1969 as a ballet suite for the eminent Argentinian choreographer Oscar Arraiz. Its military government in his homeland criticized Piazzolla’s tango reforms in the late 1960s. But the rest of the world title was chosen by Piazzolla after being told by a fortune-teller that he is protected by the mythological elemental embraced Piazzolla’s works, the popularity of which has since exploded globally. In the words of the renowned beings Sylph (an air spirit) and Ondine (a water spirit). According to his friend Horacio Ferrer – a tango lyricist – virtuoso violinist Gidon Kremer (a self-professed tango fanatic), Piazzolla’s music encompasses the entire emotional Piazzolla was superstitious and “very sensitive to esoteric things”. This album presents the world-premiere recording range, from deep pain to the love of life. Spell-bound audiences and fascinated performers in Europe and America of a violin and piano transcription from the original Piazzolla score, which we have performed internationally.