Libertango Competition

The third International Libertango Competition was held October 9-11 this year in Lanciano, Italy. This competition which is jointly organized by Italian and Russian sponsors is not yet well known but does bring together some of the most talented young musicians from around the world to compete on the basis of their performance of Piazzolla works. This year, the third round of competition required all entrants to perform Vladimir Zubitsky's Omaggio ad Astor Piazzolla. Today's video, the first I have encountered from this year's competition, features cellist Georgy Gusev playing the Omaggio accompanied by Evgeny Gutchin on the piano. Their exceptional performance skills document the high quality of musicians the competition is attracting.

For those of you who are musicians, a most interesting feature in today's blog is that you can follow the score for the performance from this link. Through measure 275, Gusev and Gutchin are closely following the score. At measure 277, Mr. Gusev begins a credenza he created himself - a well written and performed credenza which is entirely in keeping with the character of Zubitsky's composition - and then he rejoins the score at measure 360. Unfortunately, the YouTube ten minute maximum has robbed us of the last ten measures of the piece but there is certainly enough there for us to understand why Mr. Gusev won Second Place in the competition. It will take additional video from the competition for us to understand why such a bravura performance did not win First Place. It is worth noting that the composer of the piece, Mr. Zubitsky, was a member of the Competition's jury (as was Piazzolla's widow, Laura).

If you enjoyed this performance you will enjoy the performance of Oblivion which these two musicians also performed at the Competition. A full list of winners had not yet been added to the Libertango Competition website. I will find a way to share it on this blog when it becomes available.

My thanks to Mr. Gusev for some of the information in this blog.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.