In 1949, Piazzolla dissolved his tango orquesta to devote himself to developing skills as a composer of classical music. But he had a wife and two children, aged four and six, to support. This blog has recently featured some of his classical music from this period but that music did not feed the family. To make ends meet, Piazzolla continued to guest with the tango orquesta's of others, published and recorded a few tangos, and wrote soundtrack music for movies. Today's featured video is an example of the latter. It is a seldom heard movie theme, El cielo en las manos, from the movie of the same title. Interestingly, the IMDb indicates that Piazzolla himself appears in the movie. That is footage I would like to see. The movie theme has lyrics by the director of the film, Homero Cárpena. Cárpena was a successful actor at the time and was from Piazzolla's hometown of Mar del Plata, perhaps even a family friend. Both the movie and the music had some success at the time. A 78 rpm record was issued in 1950 with María de la Fuente doing the vocals (El Choclo was on the flip side) and the performance was later included on an LP, Astor Piazzolla y Maria de La Fuente.
Today's video is a solo bandoneón, instrumental version performed by Orlando Dibelo. I suspect it is his own arrangement and it is excellent. Dibelo captures the wistfulness of the original and provides a masterclass in harmonization and ornamentation of traditional tango on the bandoneón in his performance. I much prefer his version to the original. There is more of Dibelo's excellent work on the bandoneón available on his YouTube channel.
If the video does not appear below, click here.
To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.
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