When Oscar López Ruiz comments on the excellence of a performance of Oblivion, people listen. Mr. López Ruiz was the guitarist in Piazzolla's first quintet, a close friend of Piazzolla and according to the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, was a musician Piazzolla respected and turned to for musical advice. He is also the author of the difficult to find book, Piazzolla Loco Loco Loco, the story of his travels with Piazzolla. His comments were made in the forum of Piazzolla.org two days ago and he was hoping someone could identify the tenor singing Oblivion in a television program he had seen. The answer came back yesterday, not through the forum but apparently through a conversation with Horacio Ferrer who identified the singer as Guillermo Fernández. Also yesterday, perhaps not coincidentally, today's featured video of Oblivion was posted on YouTube.
The video contains neither comments nor tags but toward the end, the video itself identifies the singer as Guillermo Fernández. The video was posted by Gustavo Fontana. Maestro Fontana is the conductor in the video and the orchestra in the video is the Orquesta Filarmónica de Mendoza. Oblivion was originally composed as part of the score for the movie Enrico IV and is one of the top three most frequently performed Piazzolla compositions. While there were no lyrics in the original, several have provided lyrics. Those sung by Fernández were created by the above mentioned Ferrer, you can read them here. The orchestral arrangement is excellent and may be the work of Christian Zárate, who arranges much of the music on Fernández's recordings, but I have been unable to confirm that.
If you, like Mr. López Ruiz, enjoy the singing of Guillermo Fernández then you should be interested in his CD, Conexion Piazzolla Ferrer, which contains his interpretation of twelve Piazzolla canción including Oblivion (also available as a downloadable single).
This is a bravura performance - a highlight in the 2010 season of Piazzolla performances. If the video does not appear below, click here.
To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.
Follow Piazzolla on Video on Twitter.
I really love his performance here. First time I heard of this version of Oblivion was when I was learning Argentinian Tango. Do you happen to have a translation of this song? Or perhaps let me know if it's an appropriate song to accompany a first dance? Thanks.
ReplyDelete