Piazzólla: The Angel Suite

More than any other composer since J. S. Bach,Astor Piazzolla achieved the ultimate synthesis of the musical influences acting upon him - from Bach to jazz to classical music of his contemporaries - while remaining true to his Argentine roots. In this dazzling programme, London Concertante goes 'beyond' Piazzolla classics and introduces four newly written works by David Gordon and Adam Summerhayes that pay homage to the master.

London Concertante enjoys an enviable position in the world of classical music where it is regarded as one of the finest chamber ensembles in Europe - a position it has spent the last 17 years striving to maintain. Begun in 1991, the ensemble quickly garnered praise both here and abroad and now gives around 100 concerts a year all over the world. As well as performing regularly for music clubs and festivals in the UK, in the first part of 2008, London Concertante toured to the USA, Cyprus and will be giving concerts in Spain and Turkey later in the year. The group's first release on the Chandos label ("Gypsy Strings") came out to unequivocal critical acclaim. The success of the London Concertante owes much to the exceptional talents of its players, inspired programming by its Artistic Director, Chris Grist, and thrilling leadership under the internationally renowned violinist, Adam Summerhayes.

"played with silky-toned elegance….extraordinary unanimity. The London Concertante members, fine chamber musicians that they are, played with an uncanny clarity of texture…quite exquisite." The Strad

"Drum-tight. This is superb chamber playing" The Scotsman ****

"Quality musicians. Quite excellent…pursuing each new pulse with the unanimity of a shoal of fish. [They] play with tone as soft as velvet, bow strokes that really sing and a Romanticist's wide volume range." Evening Standard

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.”