Astor Piazzolla in Portrait

'Piazzolla was a musical genius,' says film director Fernando Solanas (for whom Piazzolla composed in the 1980s) in Dibb's documentary, 'but his social and political views were not exactly advanced.... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Release Date: 2nd May 2005
Catalogue No: OA0905D
Label: Opus Arte

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Tango Maestro

A film by Mike Dibb (extended DVD version), including rare and wonderful archive sequences spanning 30 years of filmed performances by Piazzolla’s own groups with contributions from other virtuoso performers drawn to his music, including Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma, jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, the Kronos Quartet, The Gotan Project, the Tango Pasión dance company, and Astor’s close friend Richard Galliano

Tango Nuevo

A film

Piazzólla: Milonga del ángel

James Crabb with members from Piazzolla’s last quintet and Joanna MacGregor

Piazzólla: Adiós Nonino

Piazzólla: Buenos Aires hora cero

Piazzólla: Tanguedia

Piazzólla: Mumuki

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Specials:

PIAZZOLLA: THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC - 54 minutes of additional interviews from Tango Maestro to give further insight into his music with Daniel Piazzolla, Diana Piazzolla, Richard Galliano, Oscar López Ruiz, Horacio Malvicino, Pablo Ziegler, Fernando Suárez Paz and many others.

BONUS TRACK - An alternate take of Milonga del Angel, performed by James Crabb, Joanna MacGregor and members.

PICTURE FORMAT: 16:9 / 4:3

LENGTH: 213 Mins

SOUND: DOLBY STEREO

SUBTITLES: EN/FR/DE/ES

Exploring Piazzolla’s vibrant musical influence around the world, this DVD charts the events of his turbulent, complicated personal and professional life through candid and revealing interviews with Piazzolla himself, his family, friends and the great Argentinian musicians who performed with him.

This extended DVD version of Mike Dibb’s new film Tango Maestro includes rare and wonderful archive sequences spanning 30 years of filmed performances by Piazzolla’s own groups with contributions from other virtuoso performers drawn to his music, including Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma, jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, the Kronos Quartet, The Gotan Project, the Tango Pasión dance company, and Astor’s close friend Richard Galliano.

Reviews

2010

'Piazzolla was a musical genius,' says film director Fernando Solanas (for whom Piazzolla composed in the 1980s) in Dibb's documentary, 'but his social and political views were not exactly advanced. In this he was a little like Borges. But despite his questionable opinions, he succeeded in expressing the anguish, melancholy, nostalgia and depression so typical of the man from Buenos Aires.' There was a good deal more to the man, as Dibb teases out from a host of colleagues and friends. Piazzolla was, and remains, a controversial figure in Argentina: his rejuvenation of the moribund tango genre offended a great number of his compatriots.
There is much telling testimony from fellow musicians. Jazz percussionist Gary Burton relished the chance of working with Piazzolla to become a tango performer; Nadia Boulanger called her student an 'idiot' for avoiding the 'true Piazzolla' – the tango composer. Those who played in his bands – including his son Daniel – speak of him with a mixture of reverence and remembered terror (of the demands man and music made). Although the music is fêted worldwide, the man was flawed. Driven and passionately obsessed, his relationships with both children were difficult in later life.
Tanguedia – 'a mixture of tango, tragedy and comedy' and one of Piazzolla's numbers for Solanas's Tangos, el exilio de Gardel – features in his last studio recording, preserved in Tony Staveacre's film 'Tango nuevo', along with Milonga del Angel, Adios Nonino, Zero Hour and the deliberately hyphenated Sex-tet. Piazzolla's phys- icality as a performer is manifest, the hub around which everything on the stage revolves. (A bonus track features a recent Milonga del Angel with Joanna MacGregor, James Crabb and members of Piazzolla's 1980s quintet.) Ultimately, his reputation will depend on whether such music survives and if his revivification of the tango ('vertical rape', Borges called it) is a springboard for future composers or another dead end. This unanswerable question aside, these two well-produced films (accompanied by additional unedited interviews) flesh out the hidden depths of a very human composer, who was much more than the music he wrote but whose music came to be so much more than the man.

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Astor Piazzolla in Portrait

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