Pedro y Pedro

Pedro y Pedro is perhaps the only solo bandoneón work composed by Piazzolla. He composed extended bandoneón solos within a number of other works and also arranged some classic tangos for solo bandoneón but I believe Pedro y Pedro stands alone in his oeuvre. Today's video features a sensitive performance of Pedro y Pedro by bandoneónist, Hugo Satorre. Satorre is a multi-instrumentalist but has focused on the bandoneón for the past ten years or so. He is in demand as a session musician and has played with many of today's better tango groups including Otros Aires, Quatrotango and Planetangos. You will find his biographical information on the latter two sites. Take the opportunity to watch the fingerwork as you view the video - the layout of the bandoneón keyboard requires exceptional dexterity and Satorre certainly has it.

Pedro y Pedro was composed in 1981 as a tribute to Piazzolla's bandoneónist predecessors: Pedro Maffia and Pedro Laurenz. To my knowledge, he never recorded the piece commercially nor performed it in public although the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, reports that he did play it, and record it on his own tape recorder, for friends on his sixtieth birthday. The work has received serious academic study as the subject of Luis Caruana's PhD thesis. If you are interested in following the music as Satorre plays, you can find the score on these three pages: 1, 2 and 3. While Piazzolla's score for the work was once viewable on the web, I believe the hand written score on these pages is the work of Carunana or someone else, not Piazzolla.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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