Adios Nonino - Eric and Solene Le Van

As a performance of Adios Nonino, today's featured video may not provide the best; but, as a showcase for musical talent, it will be difficult to find better. The musicians are father and daughter: Eric Le Van and his twelve year old daughter Solene. Le Van is an American born pianist, well recognized for his technical talents but perhaps even more so for his interpretive skills. His recordings are limited but his readings of Brahms and Liszt are judged highly by the critics. His destiny, though, may be to become known simply as Solene's dad or Sarah's dad or Sean's dad. The Le Van's are a musical family - a professionally performing musical family whose work can be sampled in this video. The talent in the family appears natural and considerable.

The younger daughter Solene, already a prize winning violinist, is featured in today's video. The video opens with Eric performing the introduction to Adios Nonino which Piazzolla wrote for Dante Amicarelli - one of several pianists who played in Piazzolla's first quintet. Piazzolla wrote at least three piano introductions for Adios Nonino - Amicarelli's is the best known and an extended version of it, known as the Adios Nonino Rhapsody, is sometimes played as an encore piece. In the original Piazzolla recording, found on the famous Trova recording, Amicarelli plays the intro in 2'40" - Le Van adds another thirty seconds of drama in his reading but is otherwise faithful to the original. The following duet portion is original in content and enjoyable but, for me, the real interest arrives 5'45" into the piece when twelve year old Solene volunteers a cadenza, presumably of her own creation. The cadenza is creative, appropriate to the theme and technically well performed. Consistency is always the counter weight to creativity and suffers a bit here but at this stage of her career, the cadenza is a remarkable accomplishment. The father-daughter duo close the piece conventionally leaving this listener anxious to hear more Piazzolla from the pair - perhaps the Histoire du tango series?

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