PIAZZOLLA Tangos and Dances Macquarie Trio

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA 1921-1992 1 2 3 4

Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) I. Primavera porteña (Spring) II. Verano porteño (Summer) III. Otoño porteño (Autumn) IV. Invierno porteño (Winter)

[23’26] 4’23 6’19 5’50 6’54

5 La Muerte del Angel (Death of the Angel)

2’52

6 Oblivion

4’09

7 Chau París (Goodbye Paris)

3’05

8 Río Sena (River Seine)

3’51

9 Windy

5’45

0 Adiós Nonino (Farewell Papa)

3’38

! Reunión Cumbre (Summit Meeting)

2’58

@ Revolucionario (Revolutionary)

5’45

£ Resurrección del Angel (Resurrection of the Angel)

6’35

$ Libertango

3’51

% Escualo (Shark)

2’37

^ Chiquilín de Bachín (Bachin Lad)

4’55

& Zum

3’23

Total Playing Time

77’02

All works arranged Quentin Grant, except 1-4, 6, @ arranged José Bragato Macquarie Trio Nicholas Milton violin Michael Goldschlager cello Kathryn Selby piano

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What fantasies of passion, glamour and high society does the tango not evoke? Powerful and handsome women in sparkling, bare-backed dresses partnering mysterious – even dangerous – men in the most exclusive clubs, exchanging roses between their impossibly white teeth. The smoky pall of cigarettes and cigars suspended in the air, the intoxicating taste of exotic wine, the heady musk of perfume and body heat. And the music. Seduction in sound. Lovers devouring each other with heavy-lidded eyes as they sway and plunge through the dance, intimately embracing on the polished dance floor, heart to heart. Or a sudden cry, the flash of a knife, a crime of passion – vendetta, a sordid tragedy … Although historians still debate its origins, most agree that tango was born in the brothels of Buenos Aires during the last 20 years of the 19th century. It was a child of mixed blood and uncertain parentage. Some say that rhythms played by African slaves (candombe) became married to the milonga, music of the Argentine pampas, itself the offspring of indigenous and Spanish musical forms. Others trace its origins to the minue, a popular social dance in colonial Argentina, or the contradanza, their distant origins as respectable European dances still discernible. Even its name is elusive: does it refer to the drums of the candombe (called ‘tan-go’) or from the Latin verb tangere, to touch? The porteños, inland peasants and European immigrants who gravitated towards the insalubrious establishments of the port city during the 1880s, like the rootless and oppressed everywhere, sought distraction in drink, gambling and pleasures of the flesh – all plentiful for a price. In effect, this mixed underclass formed a new social stratum in the busy and growing metropolis. Soon the bars, gambling dens, cafes and quilombos (brothels) hosted a new, scandalous style of dancing that brought bodies into the closest proximity. If there were no women, men would practise dancing together in this way with no whiff of homosexuality. As the titles of many early tangos suggest, the dance may have begun as a ritualised enactment of the highly charged relationship between prostitutes and their pimps, or between contestants for the favour of a dockside siren. One was called El Ciruja (the surgeon), a suitor who knifes a competitor. Another, El Choclo (the corncob), a phallic reference. Or Yo soy la morocha (I am the brunette). Improvisatory, with or without obscene lyrics, accompanied by the accordion-like bandoneón (imported to the New World from Germany at the same time), tango epitomised the hope and

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hopelessness of the poorest, the longing for the love one might never meet or must leave behind, the hard life. As Jorge Oclander wrote in Mañana zarpa un barco: Tomorrow, my ship will sail away. Perhaps, it will never return. I will say your name When I sail away. I’ll have a memory I can tell the seas about. Let us dance this tango, I do not want to yearn. Tomorrow, my ship will sail away. From the dives, tango slowly moved upward to el patio de los conventillos (the common areas of boarding houses), slightly more respectable lodgings for thousands of immigrants from Spain and Italy whose moral sensibilities were not so highly developed as to disdain a little risqué dancing on a Saturday night. By the turn of the 20th century, tango had reached middle- and even upper-class families, brought home from the suburbs where educated young men sought excitement and adventure. It was, however, a ‘reformed’ tango, purged of its most outrageous erotic characteristics though still, perhaps, charged with an amorous frisson. Recordings also brought tango into Argentine homes, though politicians condemned it, fearful that it would damage Argentina’s reputation as an increasingly sophisticated and wealthy nation. Instead, it would make it. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, the colonial Spanish city of Buenos Aires was almost completely rebuilt, Haussmannesque boulevards flanked with new buildings à la française and all’italiana linking beautiful garden parks. When the wealthy Argentines began holidaying in Europe, (the French phrase ‘as rich as an Argentinian’ captures the effect made) they brought tango to the Old World. It caught on like wildfire. No party was complete without a tango orchestra. Women’s fashions were adjusted. Allegedly, a designer was stuck with some orange fabric that wouldn’t sell, until he named it Orange Tango. It was not long before tango had conquered Europe. Astor Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on 11 March 1921, and moved with his family to New York in 1924. When only eight years old, his father gave him a 19-dollar pawnshop 4

bandoneón. Three years later, he made his first recording. Studies with the Hungarian pianist and Rachmaninoff by his student Béla Wilda opened Piazzolla’s ears to the European classics (‘I learned to love Bach with him,’ he later remarked), but tango already exerted a strong attraction on the adolescent – a polarity that Piazzolla would eventually develop into a synthesis in his own compositions. As a teenager, he played in the tango orchestra of legendary tango singer and Latin film star Carlos Gardel, with whom he featured in a cameo as a newspaper boy in the 1935 film El día que me quieras (The Day You Love Me). In 1937 he returned to Argentina, where an attempt to study accounting failed in the face of his love of music, of which he said, ‘Once you marry her, she is your everlasting love and you go to the grave with her.’ While in Mar del Plata, Piazzolla heard a radio broadcast of the Elvino Vardaro Sextet and was so struck by their interpretation of tango that he decided, at the age of 17, to move to the capital in 1938. His dedication to music embraced composition and playing in ‘every cabaret in Buenos Aires’, including that of Aníbal Troilo, a master bandoneón player for whom he arranged tangos. But the classical world still beckoned him. Piazzolla recounts how in 1941 he introduced himself to Artur Rubinstein, then in Buenos Aires, insisting that the master look at his ‘piano concerto’ (for which Piazzolla had neglected to compose a part for the orchestra!). Having played through the piece, Rubinstein asked him, ‘Do you like music?’ ‘Yes, maestro,’ replied Piazzolla. ‘Then,’ asked Rubinstein, ‘Why don’t you study?’ A phone call facilitated an introduction to the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, with whom Piazzolla studied for six years. During the early 1940s Piazzolla composed a number of classical works and left Troilo’s orchestra to lead that of singer Francisco Fiorentino, before founding and running his own from 1946 to 1949. Even at this stage his innovative approach ruffled the feathers of more traditional tangueros, who disapproved of his novel rhythmic ideas and sophisticated ‘modern’ approach. By 1949, however, Piazzolla faced something of an artistic crisis. Despite a developing career as a bandoneónist, band-leader and composer of film music, his continuing studies of Modernist music (particularly Bartók and Stravinsky) and of orchestra direction, and his interest in jazz, turned him away from tango. He concentrated, instead, on composition and further musical studies, being rewarded in 1953 by winning the Fabien Sevitzky Competition for his three-movement symphonic work Buenos Aires, which features two bandoneóns. Naturally, the classical conservatives were 5

outraged at the undignified inclusion of a pair of such uncouth instruments! ‘I broke the old molds,’ he remarked, ‘that’s why they attacked me and why I had to defend myself, saying at times a word too many.’ However, the prize included a French Government scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who with typical acuity saw through his classical ambitions to the real musical impulse within him: ‘Astor,’ she said when he finally played tango for her, ‘Your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla is here. Never leave it behind.’ The choice between classical sophistication and tango resolved itself for Piazzolla into a unique synthesis: structure and passion, tradition and innovation, bandoneón and string orchestra – the beginnings of nuevo tango. Chau París and Río Sena were both recorded by Piazzolla in 1955, the former dedicated to his friends Edouard and Valerie Pécourt – Edouard ran a record shop in Paris and learnt Spanish just so that he could better understand the tango. Ever the individualist, Piazzolla didn’t even play the bandoneón like anyone else. He stood, one foot on a chair, in a pose that became his own. Returning to Argentina in 1955, he formed a new group, Octeto Buenos Aires, with the unusual make-up of two bandoneóns, piano, two violins, cello, double bass and electric guitar, in effect a chamber ensemble. Under fire from conservative critics, and facing resistance from both record companies and the media, he continued until 1958, at which point he disbanded the octet and returned to New York for some years, experimenting, largely unsuccessfully, with jazz-tango fusion. His father’s death in 1959 prompted him to compose Adiós Nonino, one of his most famous pieces. Over the years, Piazzolla made more than 20 different arrangements of this work, saying in 1980: ‘Perhaps I was surrounded by angels. I was able to write the finest tune I have written. I don’t know if I shall ever do better. I doubt it.’ Returning once more to Argentina and founding his first Quintet (bandoneón, violin, bass, piano and electric guitar), he continued to compose. La Muerte del Angel, a four-voice fugue written in 1962, was for a play of the same name by the Argentine playwright Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz. Another more significant collaboration between Muñoz and Piazzolla was the music he wrote to accompany Muñoz’s 1965 play Melenita de oro. Among the four works which Piazzolla wrote for the play was Verano porteño, which would eventually become a part of the four-movement suite Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas. The critics were quite harsh about Muñoz’s play, but described

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Piazzolla’s music as ‘original and agreeable’. The suite as a whole, was given its first public performance in 1970. Even though it is undeniably intended as a homage to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, there is no obvious musical connection between the two works. An interesting feature of Piazzolla’s original version for Quintet was the virtuosic solos for bandoneón, for the left hand only! By this time, Piazzolla was famous enough for him and his Quintet to be invited to tour both the United States and Brazil, showcasing the incredible strength of the Argentine culture – tango singer Edmundo Rivero was also part of this ‘cultural delegation’. The Quintet performed at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on 26 May 1965, which included the first performance of Resurrección del Angel. The critic for the New York Times was ecstatic in his praise for the group – ‘freewheeling imagination’, ‘unusual instrumental timbres’, ‘sounded like nothing but itself, and that was quite enough.’ Another great live recording by the Quintet was Astor Piazzolla at El Regina, from 1970, which featured Revolucionario. Piazzolla continued to perform and record extensively, and began working with writers such as Jorge Luis Borges (the recording El Tango) and Horacio Ferrer (the 1968 ‘operita’ Maria de Buenos Aires), thereby developing a new direction for tango song. One of his first hits with collaborator Ferrer was Chiquilín de Bachín. The Bachín was a favourite restaurant of Ferrer and Piazzolla’s, and this waltz was first sung by Amelita Baltar, whom he began dating a couple of years after leaving his wife, Dedé Wolff, in 1966. He had another more popular hit with Ferrer and Baltar, Balada para un loco (Ballad for a Madman), which won second place in the 1969 Ibero-American Music Festival. Owing to the increasingly violent political situation in Argentina, the 1970s saw his return to Paris and the premiere of an oratorio El Pueblo Joven (1971) to a text by Ferrer. His new ensemble Conjunto 9, which embodied many of Piazzolla’s aspirations for a tightly knit chamber-tango formation, performed extensively both in Italy and Buenos Aires before dissolving for financial reasons. Zum is included on Astor Piazzolla and his Nonet, a live recording of a concert at the Teatro Regina in Buenos Aires in 1972. These highly productive years as a composer and performer were disrupted in 1973 when Piazzolla suffered a heart attack, and subsequently moved to Italy where Libertango was written – Piazzolla described the piece as ‘a sort of song to liberty’. The album on which this work first appeared, called Libertango, contained eight tangos that the March 1976

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edition of Playboy claimed ‘… tell a girl what’s on your mind … We guarantee that before side two of the record is over, she’ll be flat on her back.’ Another group, the octet Conjunto Electronico (bandoneón, violin/flute/ saxophone, acoustic and electric piano, organ, guitar, electric bass and synthesiser) extended his range into what has been described as ‘jazz-rock’. Characteristically, Piazzolla emphasised that ‘it had more to do with tango than with rock’. The combination of bandoneón and saxophone also featured in his mid-1970s recording, with saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, Summit (1974), which features Reunión Cumbre. The remainder of the decade and the following ten years saw Piazzolla’s popularity climax with numerous recordings and concerts around the world both as a soloist with orchestra and as a chamber musician working with quintets, sextets and string quartets. In February 1977, while in Milan to work on the film score for Armaguedon, he worked on the album Persecuta, which he described as being ‘full of fugues, counter-fugues and other irreverences.’ One of the tracks on this record was Windy, a tender tribute to his dog ‘Windy’, which even musically depicts the rattle the dog wore! Escualo, a composition filled with rhythmic interest, was written in 1978 and featured on the album of the same name (although this album is also sometimes referred to as Biyuya). All the songs on this recording relate to shark fishing – one of Piazzolla’s favourite holiday pursuits while in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Piazzolla worked on the music for Mario Bellocchio’s 1984 film Enrico IV (Henry IV), which was adapted from Luigi Pirandello’s classic play. Recorded in Rome, Bellocchio was immensely satisfied with the music, particularly Piazzolla’s capturing of the tragic plight of the deluded King. One of the highlights of the score was the touchingly nostalgic Oblivion. Prizes for his film score El exilio de Gardel (1986), massive concerts such as the one held in New York’s Central Park during 1987 and recordings (including 1989’s Five Tango Sensations with the Kronos Quartet) capped his remarkable career. 1988 saw the release of his final recording (La Camorra); 1989 his final concert in Argentina with the New Tango Sextet, the last group he would form. Piazzolla continued to perform as soloist with orchestras and string quartets until August 1990, when he suffered a stroke in Paris. Astor Piazzolla died on 4 July 1992.

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As might be expected from a man who spent so much time on the move, working with some of the most outstanding musicians of his time, and exposed to so many different musical influences, Piazzolla’s music is at once difficult to define succinctly yet immediately recognisable. His oeuvre totals in excess of a thousand compositions, ranging from works for full symphony orchestra to Le Grand Tango for cello and piano, written in 1982 for Mstislav Rostropovich. Perhaps Piazzolla expressed it most clearly when he said in a 1989 interview: ‘I would be offended if they said that my music is light, trivial. My music is a popular chamber music that comes from the tango … Well, there are a lot of ways to define it … Thanks to the fact that my music is very porteña, from Buenos Aires, I can work all over the world because the public finds [in it] a different culture, a new culture …’ A critic from The New York Times once said an absolute truth: ‘all the “upper thing” that Piazzolla makes is music; but beneath you can feel the tango’. His biographer, Natalio Gorin was more specific: ‘In Piazzolla nothing was ever lost, neither his father’s tango records nor the Bach he heard through the door as a child; neither the exact counterpoint and fugue he learned with Nadia Boulanger nor the cool swing of Gerry Mulligan or the style of [the great bandoneón player and orchestra leader] Pedro Laurenz.’ The same is true of José Bragato and Quentin Grant’s stylish arrangements of Piazzolla’s music for piano trio, an ensemble which epitomises the intimacy of chamber music proper yet is capable of expressing the passionately lyrical and percussive impulses that gave rise to tango, and which continue to give nuevo tango its phoenix-like ability to rise again with each new interpretation. Indeed, many classical musicians have interpreted Piazzolla’s music, among them Yo-Yo Ma and Gidon Kremer. ‘Tango is sad, dramatic, but not pessimistic,’ he said. ‘The old, absurd tango lyrics were pessimistic.’ But whether bawled in a Buenos Aires gambling den, performed in a concert hall or committed to a recording, these are the themes of tango: love, life, death. Stephen Schafer

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Recording Producer and Editor Thomas Grubb Recording Engineer Christian Huff-Johnston Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Recorded 18-20 October 2002 and 27-29 January 2003 in the Eugene Goossens Hall of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ultimo Centre, Sydney. ABC Classics Robert Patterson, Martin Buzacott, Hilary Shrubb, Natalie Shea, Laura Bell  2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 훿 2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited.

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