Libertango - A Bass Version

The International Society of Basses has 3,000 members and like their cousins, the tubas, they enjoy getting together to make music without those irritating treble instruments. One such recent gathering (November 7, 2009) was a bass festival in Bucharest, Romania where the final concert included a double bass orchestra version of Libertango.

The concert was dedicated to Professor Ion Cheptea on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Prof. Cheptea was a well know teacher of the double bass at National University of Music in Bucharest. One of Prof. Cheptea's former students, Daisuke Soga, arranged and conducted a thirty-three piece bass orchestra, most of the members former students of Prof. Cheptea, in the performance of Libertango. There are four soloists in the performance: Catalin Rotaru, Sandel Smarandescu, Petru Iuga, and Botond Kostyak. The arrangement is excellent. It is rhythmically interesting and avoids most of the cliches which tarnish so many such arrangements. Soga is to be congratulated - the piece deserves to be repeated at every bass festival in 2010.

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