Thursday, February 25, 2010

Romance de barrio

Romance de barrio is a classic tango waltz composed by Anibal Troilo. In 1951, Piazzolla arranged and recorded the piece with his orquesta tipica and the singer, Maria de la Fuente (you can hear it here). While it is a departure from our usual practice of featuring music composed by Piazzolla, an exception will be made for Troilo to feature the interesting version of Romance de barrio provided in today's video by Yuri Medianik on bandoneón accompanied by Artyom Dervoed on guitar and Andrey Tikhonov on bass. The trio with the addition of a violinist performs as the Emotion Orchestra.

I believe Romance de barrio was first recorded in 1947 by Troilo's orquesta tipica with vocalist, Floreal Ruiz, singing Homero Manzi's lyrics. You can hear a sample or purchase that version on lala. The version by Medianik's trio is much closer to Piazzolla's version than to Troilo's original - treating it as a delicate waltz rather than as a typical tango waltz with staccato after beats. It is a very appealing arrangement, almost but not quite a classical treatment. Medianik is an astonishing musician who began on the accordion at age two and switched to the violin at age eight. He ultimately became a master of both and added bandoneón when he discovered the music of Piazzolla. There are a number of other videos which feature him playing Piazzolla on the accordion in an orchestral setting. I hope to cover those in a later blog.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



As an aside: for those who find a tango waltz to be a conflict in terms, I suggest this video of a fine, traditional tango waltz.

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

No comments:

Post a Comment