Astor Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina on March 11, 1921. The occasion of the 90th anniversary of that day is leading to celebratory concerts around the world throughout the month of March. Today's featured video comes from one of the most important of those celebrations. It is from a concert held in Buenos Aires at the Eva Peron Amphitheater in the Parque Centenario. Some 1700 people were lucky enough to get one of the free tickets to the concert to hear two stars involved in the early success of Piazzolla: Horacio Ferrer and Amelita Baltar. Ferrer was the primary lyrical collaborator with Piazzolla and Baltar was the lead singer for Piazzolla from 1968 to 1975 and was Piazzolla's constant companion during that period. We are fortunate that Flavio Pigazzi captured most, perhaps all, of the concert on video and shared it on YouTube.
As this is being written, there are sixteen videos from this concert posted and perhaps there are more to come. The video I have chosen features Ms. Baltar performing the Piazzolla/Ferrer classic, Balada para un loco, which she first introduced to the world in 1969. You can find the other fifteen videos on Flavio Pigazzi's YouTube Channel. Ms. Baltar is backed in the video by the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires which is led through the concert by a variety of conductors including Raúl Garello, Néstor Marconi and Juan Carlos Cuacci. The notes do not so indicate, but I believe that is Marconi with the baton in the video. Ms. Baltar owns this song and her performance here is spectacular. Note that at the end of the video, Horacio Ferrer, who wrote the lyrics, joins her on the stage. Mr. Ferrer performs a number of the works which he and Piazzolla created, singing them even, in other videos from this concert - don't miss them.
My thanks to Mr. Pagazzi for sharing the video and I encourage you all to visit his excellent blog, Hagan Ruido.
If the video does not appear below, click here.
To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.
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