Piazzólla: Concierto para Quinteto

Berlin meets Buenos Aires and it takes five to tango as the Artemis Quartet takes to the floor with Chilean pianist Jacques Ammon for a programme of works by Argentinian legend Astor Piazzolla.

It is perhaps no surprise that Crescendo magazine, reviewing the Artemis Quartet’s recent Virgin Classics CD of Schubert’s C major Quintet with Truls Mørk, said that the performance “could not be highly enough praised“. Perhaps more unexpected is that the Berlin-based string quartet has now joined forces with the Chilean pianist Jacques Ammon for a programme of music by Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992), the Argentinian master of the tango.

Eckart Runge, the Artemis‘ cellist, has in fact been collaborating with Ammon over the past decade to create celloproject, a duo playing the music of Piazzolla, his predecessor Carlos Gardel, and composers from the worlds of jazz (such as Chick Corea) and film (such as Charlie Chaplin and Nino Rota). As Runge says: "In the mid-1980s, when I first heard the music of Astor Piazzolla, little known in Europe at the time ... it was like being struck by lightning. With its almost cruelly shattering immediacy -- reminiscent of Schubert, somewhere between dream-like beauty and deathly sadness – and a refined subtlety between joy and tears, reminiscent of Chaplin, it moved me deeply. Only some years later did I dare to play this music for myself for the first time. Immediately I began to do my best to bring together everything I could find out about this music and its history, and consequently visited Buenos Aires.“

Although tango is understood as a ’popular‘ rather than classical genre, Piazzolla studied with the famed composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and his musical collaborators over the years included figures from jazz and popular music – for instance the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, the vibraphone player Gary Burton and the Italian chanteuse Milva – and classical musicians such as Salvatore Accardo, Mstislav Rostropovitsch and the Kronos Quartet. His output includes orchestral works, an opera and an oratorio. Perhaps his best-known work features on this disc, the Estaciones Porteñas (Seasons in Buenos Aires), inspired by Vivaldi’s Quattro stagioni and here performed by a piano trio.

Runge explains: “The idea of the Piazzolla Project was to bring the authentic sonic and expressive palette of the tango to life with the inexhaustible possibilities of the string quartet, the piano trio and the piano quintet. Sometimes melting into the melancholy tones of the bandoneon, sometimes breaking out into the raw heterogeneity of the tango quintet, it represented a completely new encounter with sound, rhythm, style and gesture. It was a pleasure for me to share with my quartet colleagues the experience I had gathered over the years in my engagement with this culture. They were enthused by the depth and variety of the tango. For all of us, this music was a great inspiration and it exercised an enriching influence on our involvement with the classical chamber repertoire.”

On this CD the ensemble Triade perform Astor Piazzolla’s most well known and famous tangos in inimitable, excellent fashion.

Astor Piazzolla’s name has become synonymous with tango, that epitome of sadness and melancholy expressed in dance and singing. Piazzolla laid the foundations for the worldwide renaissance of this cultural phenomenon. The Argentinean composer and bandonéon player rescued tango from being the clichéd dance form it had been reduced to during the Golden Twenties – Piazzolla set about reviving tango with an equal amount of courage and uncompromising endeavour. He mixed traditional tango with elements of jazz and classical music, inventing a new style in the process: tango nuevo. Some tango aficionados celebrated Piazzolla as being a true innovator – others cursed him, calling him tango’s “gravedigger”. Regardless of the subjective assessment of his achievements, Piazzolla personified tango‘s zenith and in addition, became one of the most important composers of the twentieth century.

Since the Cadence Ensemble's first performance in 2004, the group has quickly become one of the leading and most popular music groups of Armenia. Initially performing the works of Argentine composer, Astor Piazzolla the ensemble has expanded its repertoire to incorporate contemporary European and Armenian composers. Under the leadership of pianist,Armen Babakhanian, the ensemble has enjoyed international success. Most recently the ensemble have given concerts in Paris, London and Brussels. This new disc focuses primarily on the tangos of Piazzolla, but also features new arrangements of works by Carlos Gardel, Hector Stamponi and George Gershwin.

The members of the Caliente Quartet take us on a journey to the heart of Astor Piazzólla’s music, reinterpreting the Argentine composer’s masterpieces with passion and emotion. It suffices to hear the way they recreate his works here to be convinced of the importance of this music and the profound chord it strikes with us more than ten years after his passing. A debut disc of dazzling force!