Friday, July 22, 2011

Tanti Anni Prima - Jing Zhao & Yasuji Ohagi

Among the handful of Piazzolla compositions which most would agree qualify for the descriptor, "beautiful," must be included Tanti Anni prima, which is featured in today's video. The performers in the video, Jing Zhao, on cello, and Yasuji Ohagi, on guitar, contribute to the beauty with the perfection of their playing.

Jing Zhao was born in China and received her early music training there before moving on to Japan and Europe for further training by Ryosuke Hori, Rostropovich and Yo-Yo Ma. Such artists reserve their teaching time for only the very best and Ms. Zhao obviously qualifies. Listen to the complex dynamics within almost every note she plays and you will understand part of what makes her such a great cellist. Yasuji Ohaji is less well known than Ms. Zhao but he is a worthy partner in this performance. His articulation is clean and his feel for the music perfectly matches that of Ms. Zhao. There is nothing which could be done to improve this performance.

The video is from a rare, and now now discontinued DVD titled, Le Dix Cordes Live, and I believe the audio may be found on an equally rare CD of the same title. The video has appeared before on YouTube and has been removed so this is another video you should watch now while it is available.

The piece, Tanti Anni prima, is from Piazzolla's score for the movie Enrico IV. You can see the piece in the context of the movie at 4'40" into this video and read more about the story behind the music and it's twin, Ave Maria, in this earlier Piazzolla on Video blog. I am guessing this is their own arrangement - I find no other cello/guitar versions of the piece.

It is no accident that I have uploaded this blog of calm and beauty at the same time I uploaded the blog of chaos and cacophony of F & F Project's interpretation of Libertango. It helps to keep things in balance, don't you think?

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Libertango - F & F Project

The title in today's video says it is Libertango, Piazzolla's most often played melody but to my ears it sounds like Oh! Susana, Stephen Foster's most often played melody or maybe Felix Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. It could be anything, really. When you deconstruct music as far as F & F Project do, everything descends to a primordial, atomic level where discernment of simple things like melody and rhythm are simply not possible. Their deconstructed, "experimental version" of Libertango is surprisingly similar to the "Stoner Version" of Libertango which I claimed in a blog earlier this year to be the worst Piazzolla I had ever heard. (Interestingly, I have had more comments on that blog than on any I have written).

F & F Project is Hector Fiore and Omar Farías. Farias provides percussion. Fiore, a flute player by training, plays a Yamaha wind MIDI controller in this video and, I believe, does the computer work and arranging of their works. In the world of electronic music, these gentlemen are relative stars who have performed around the world and whose creations are played by other electronica musicians.

F & F first performed Libertango as part of their work, Popurrí, in 2001. A later version was used as a dance score in a 2009 YouTube Video. I have not heard the 2001 version but the 2009 version still retained the essence of Libertango which was successfully eliminated in today's video.

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Milonga del Ángel - Rosewood, Fire and Steel

I don't know how today's video of Milonga del ángel ends. Call me squeamish but the swords got so long, I had to stop watching.

Every month through 2009 and 2010, I picked the most bizarre Piazzolla video of the month. If I were still carrying out that practice, today's video by the duo, Rosewood, Fire and Steel, would no doubt win for July, 2011. It is not the music that is bizarre - Phil Weaver plays a tasteful version of Milonga del ángel. It is the young lady, Patricia Forrest, swallowing steel swords of ever increasing lethality.

I assume she survived to film the next part of their act - swallowing (surprise!) fire while Mr. Weaver plays Classical gas.

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Libertango - Pablo Ziegler Quartet

Birdland, the legendary New York City jazz club, was born on Broadway in 1949 and supposedly named after its first headline performer, Charlie "Bird" Parker. Rock-and-roll killed Birdland in 1965, but like the phoenix, it reappeared in a new uptown location in 1986 and in 1996, it returned to Broadway where it has been headlining the best jazz has to offer ever since. Today's video captures one of today's best, Pablo Ziegler and his quartet, in a performance of Libertango last week on July 15 at Birdland. Birdland has the usual "no video" rule but some fan ignored the rule until he was caught and the video was ended before the song was ended. I suggest you watch the video now before the true owners of the performance have it removed from YouTube.

Pablo Ziegler is no stranger to readers of this blog. He was the pianist in Piazzolla's second quintet. He is a fine composer on his own part but has continued to perform much of Piazzolla's work in his own heavily jazz tinged style. This blog has recently covered Ziegler in performances with Branford Marsalis and with Regina Carter but in both of those performances, Ziegler accepted some compromise in his style to accommodate his headliner sidemen. There is no need for that in today's video - we get pure Ziegler and his quartet. Members of the quartet are not identified in the video but I believe they are Hector Del Curto on bandoneón, Pedro Giraudo on contrabass and Jisoo Ok on cello. Libertango has become so widely played (and abused) that I know some Piazzolla fans refuse to listen to it anymore but this one deserves your time.

Ziegler did have a guest star that evening: Argentine vocalist, Sandra Luna. You can view a bit of Ms. Luna's performance in this bootleg video from the same concert.

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Monday, July 18, 2011

Retrato De Mi Mismo

Q: What do Astor Piazzolla, Alfredo Gobbi and Milton Nascimento have in common?

A: Each was the subject of a musical portrait (retrato) created by Astor Piazzolla.

Retrato de mi mismo (which translates as Portrait of myself) is by far the rarest of the three retratos composed by Piazzolla. There are only two versions on YouTube and virtually no available recordings of the work. I have chosen to feature both of the available videos today.

The first video is an interesting and well done video montage which uses the recording made by Piazzolla's first quintet in 1967, as a sound track. Joining Piazzolla in that quintet are Jaime Gosis on piano, Antonio Agri on violin, Kicho Díaz on contrabass and Oscar López Ruiz on electric guitar. That 1967 recording is to be found on the very rare LP titled Astor Piazzolla - Egle Martin which is now only available on the Japanese reissue Piazzolla Para Coleccionistas. This video provides you an opportunity to hear a very rare Piazzolla recording.

The second video is the only live performance video of the work available on YouTube. The performers are Marcelo González on violin, Vera Pavlova on piano and Omar Massa on bandoneón. If the score to Retrato de mi mismo were readily available, many groups would no doubt play it. The arrangement is the work of Ms. Pavlova, and I suspect she is also the one who went to enormous effort to transcribe the work by listening to the original. A superb job was done on the transcription - the original comes through strongly and authentically. Pavlova and González are well known for their authentic covers of Piazzolla's works in the group Quinteto Nuestro Tiempo and they have extended the authentic sound to this trio. The bandoneónist, Omar Massa, is not the usual bandoneónist for Quinteto Nuestro Tiempo but is a well known free lance bandoneónist. His recent work includes an appearance with Plácido Domingo which was captured in this delightful video. I express my appreciation to the musicians in this video. They have provided an important gift to the Piazzolla community by resurrecting this work. I hope they will record it and share the score with others in the future.

If this was truly a musical self-portrait capturing the way Piazzolla imagined himself in the mid-1960's, my interpretation would be that it was time of melancholy, steady toil at difficult tasks and eventual triumph. Others will no doubt read the emotion of the music differently - comments relating your interpretation are welcomed below.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for the original Piazzola version and click here for the live performance version.





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Saturday, July 16, 2011

Bandoneón - Michael Zisman

The recent blog which featured Zita from Suite Troileana provides a good excuse to turn the calendar back to January, 2008 when today's video of Michal Zisman playing Bandoneón, the first movement of Suite Troileana, was first posted on YouTube.

The video is one of a set of 8 videos from a concert of solo bandoneón music performed by Zisman at the Theater Rex in Wuppertal, Germany as part of a tango festival held there. I believe the set of videos represents the finest collection of bandoneón music on YouTube and, in fact, is better than any recording of which I am aware. If you enjoy bandoneón music, you must watch all of these videos. You will find them on guidogayk's YouTube Channel. Today's video represents the only Piazzolla composition of the eight but there are two classic tangos played in arrangements created by Piazzolla: Juan Carlos Cobian's La casita de mis viejos and Joaquin Mora's Margarita Gautier. You can hear Piazzolla play these bandoneón solos on the CD, Concierto para quinteto. Arguably, Zisman does a better job on them than Piazzolla - there is more feeling in his performance.

Michael Zisman is a resident of Bern, Switzerland but Argentina is, literally, his fatherland. His father, Daniel Zisman, a well known classical violinist, was born there but as an adult split his time between Buenos Aires and Berne, Switzerland where he was the conductor of the Berne Symphony Orchestra. I don't know in which country Michael was born but he studied bandoneón with Nestor Marconi in Buenos Aires and at age 11 appeared on stage as a bandoneónist with Leopoldo Federico - both legends in the tango world. The elder Zisman is also a fine tango musician and is the founder of 676 Tango Ensemble which includes Michael on bandoneón. The young Zisman has recorded extensively - you will find his music for download at iTunes or Amazon.com. Zisman is a master technician on the bandoneón - fleet of finger and in total control of the bellows - but it is the nuanced emotion that he brings to the music which makes him one of today's best bandoneónists.

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Zita - Sung-ho, Gatto, Argerich and Song

It is not well known that Niccolò Paganini, one of the most famous violin virtuosi of his day, was also a guitarist. He, in fact, composed for both instruments. So it makes some sense for Lorenzo Gatto and Denis Sung-ho Janssens, virtuosi on violin and guitar, respectively, to collect a couple of friends and put together a concert titled Travelling Paganini. But why should such a concert include Piazzolla's Zita as captured in today's featured video? The answer is to be found in the story of Denis Sung-ho Janssens.

Sung-ho was born in Korea and raised in Belgium. It is in that country that he studied guitar with Odair Assad at the Conservatoire royal de Mons and with Sérgio Assad at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles. His teachers, the Assad brothers, were the guitarists for whom Piazzolla composed Tango Suite. They are renowned for the performances and arrangements of Piazzolla's music. The Assad's recording, Sérgio & Odair Assad Play Piazzolla, is a classic. They no doubt sparked Sung-ho's interest in Piazzola and Sung-ho, no doubt encouraged the incorporation of Piazzolla in the Travelling Paganini concert.

Lorenzo Gatto also studied at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, probably meeting Sung-ho there. I first became aware of their joint interest in Piazzolla in a video of the two performing Concert d'aujoud'hui at break-neck speed which was featured in this blog (unfortunately, the video has been removed from YouTube). For the Travelling Paganini concert, the pair added Song Young Hoon on cello and Lyda Chen Argerich on viola. Interestingly, Mr. Song performed Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango in his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 so he too has Piazzolla interests. Ms. Argerich is the daughter of famed Argentine pianist, Martha Argerich, so an interest in Piazzolla might also be expected there. They are remarkable young musicians and we are fortunate that, for whatever reason, they have chosen to apply their talents to the music of Piazzolla.

Skilled as they are, it was not their musicianship that attracted me to the video; rather, it was the arrangement of Zita which, unfortunately, is not credited but I am told that the arranger is Korean. Zita is one of four movements in Suite Troileana which Piazzolla composed in 1975 to honor his friend, mentor and former boss, Anibal Troilo. The four movements are related to the four loves of Troilo's life: Zita (his wife), Bandoneon, Whiskey and Escolaso (gambling). The four represent some of the best music composed by Piazzolla in the 1970's. You can hear Piazzolla's performance of Zita here and hear what may be the inspiration for today's video in this performance by the Assad brothers and Yo-Yo Ma. The guitar work in today's video sounds very derivative of the work of the Assad's until those wonderful "bent" Asian notes at 1'25" into the video. But the bowed string work in this video is much more important - the arranger has done a superb job in converting the music into string trio format. Suite Troileana has always had classical potential but this is the first time that potential has been fully met. Let's hope the unknown arranger will undertake the other three movements of the work and if the four young musicians should perform those for YouTube, let's hope the camera is moved in a little closer.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



If you enjoyed this, give their Paganini video a look also.

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Friday, July 8, 2011

Adios Nonino in Kansas City

There is much to admire about Elizabeth Suh Lane. She is a world class violinist who, inspired by the sounds of Bach in New York City, returned to her home in Kansas City, Missouri to found the Bach Aria Soloists in 1999. That group has thrived and become the center of chamber music in the city. But Ms. Lane's interests are much broader than just chamber music. Under the sponsorship of the Bach Aria Soloists she has expanded their concert series to include notable jazz artists and in February of this year, a Night of Tango with a focus on the music of Astor Piazzolla. Today's featured video of Adios Nonino comes from that concert.

Ms. Lane imported two of the best tango musicians in New York City for the evening - Gustavo Casenave on piano and Hector Del Curto on bandoneón. To her violin, she added two Kansas City musicians, Beau Bledsoe on guitar and Jeff Harshbarger on contra-bass, to form a classic Piazzolla quintet. The night included eight Piazzolla works for quintet and you can see them all on Beau Bledsoe's YouTube channel. Their sound is authentic. I believe they are playing directly from Piazzolla's quintet arrangements and they play them well. The people of Kansas City had a treat rarely available in the United States - Piazzolla's quintet music performed in an authentic manner.

Much of the credit for the success of the night must go to Del Curto and his bandoneón. Del Curto is not as flashy as some young bandoneónist but his playing is sensitive, fluid and nuanced in a manner which suggests he has put time into listening to Piazzolla's bandoneón. In addition, he surely benefits genetically from a grandfather and great-grandfather who were famous bandoneónists in Buenos Aires. He is almost certainly the best bandoneónist in the United States today and arguably one of the best in the world. But the reason I chose the video of Adios Nonino was not because of the bandoneón. It was because of the piano work of Casenave.

Gustavo Casenave was born in Uruquay, which shares claim with Buenos Aires as the birthplace of tango. His canyengue is the result of birth and nurture. He also studied jazz at Berklee College of Music and has played with some of the best tango ensembles and best jazz ensembles in the world. You can see all that background and experience come together in the piano cadenza he created to open Adios Nonino. Starting Adios Nonino with a piano cadenza is a tradition started by Piazzolla who wrote at least three such cadenzas - all of them stand on their own as piano compositions and are played on stage as such. An in-demand tango pianist like Casenave must have many chances to polish such an opening cadenza which made it very surprising to me to find this video of a concert less than six months before Kansas City where Casenave plays an equally long, equally complex cadenza and it is almost completely different. I could be wrong but I suspect that Casenave, consummate jazz artist that he is, creates the cadenza anew at every concert - no doubt preserving some of the best from concerts past but always adding something new to keep it fresh. I counted a dozen musical ideas in his cadenza and with the exception of the rocking octaves and rapidly repetitive chords that run from 3'20" to 4'25", they all worked. I do sincerely hope that the section from 4'00" to 4'25" will be viewed as an interesting but failed experiment. That moment aside, it is Casenave's cadenza which elevates this performance of Adios Nonino above most others.

While I am complaining, there is one other problem in the performance and that is the stage set-up which relegated the guitarist to a spot hidden, at least to the camera, behind Ms. Lane and her violin. Piazzolla always wrote for the guitar as a full voice in his quintet and the instrument deserves a seat in the front row. Piazzolla normally placed the guitarist to the stage right of the pianist and Ms. Lane should have done so here. The guitar is also too low in the sound mix. When I could hear him, it was apparent that Mr. Bledsoe was doing an excellent job but few could see or hear him.

This is a concert I would have thoroughly enjoyed. I encourage you to watch some of the other videos from the concert but if you can only watch one other, watch Escualo. Ms. Lane's violin work on this difficult work is superb.

If the video of Adios Nonino does not appear below, click here.



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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Los Pàjaros Perdidos - Patty Trossèl

Maybe the title should be Los Pàjaros Perdidos - La Pat? I am not sure, the hat confuses me. The voice sounds like Patty Trossèl but the hat reminds me of La Pat. Regardless, she sings a wonderful version of Los Pàjaros Perdidos in today's featured video. Accompanying her on piano is the very able Dutch musician, Bert van den Brink.

Wikipedia says that Patty Trossèl has a range of four octaves, possibly true, but it is the bottom two octaves which gives her a rich contralto perfect for the canción of Piazzolla. Like Milva, Amelita Baltar and Roxana Fontán, she has a touch of huskiness in her delivery that hints of cabaret and late nights and experiences on the dark side of life. That matches rather well the character of La Pat, the persona adopted by Ms. Trossèl throughout her early career. It also matches rather well with the character of most of Piazzolla's canción. With a voice which is such a perfect match for Piazzolla's songs, it is surprising that it has taken nearly 30 years for her to begin including works by Piazzolla in her performances - but better now than never. She has never recorded Piazzolla and to my knowledge, only began including Piazzolla in concert appearances in 2009 when Balada para un loco became part of her stage repertoire - fortunately viewable on YouTube at 4'40" into this video. She is making up for lost time by including three Piazzolla numbers in her current show - not only Balada para un loco and today's featured Los Pàjaros Perdidos but also Che Tango Che. The current stage performance also includes a wonderful piece composed by Trossèl, Ich suche deine Sterne, and some beautifully sung works by Gabriel Fauré. You can see them all on Trossèl's YouTube Channel.

The featured work, Los Pàjaros Perdidos, was composed in 1973 and the lyrics are by Argentine poet, Mario Trejo, not by Horacio Ferrer as many assume. Trejo also provided the lyrics for one other lesser known Piazzolla canción, Violetas populares. It was first recorded by Piazzolla in 1975 on the Trova LP, Balada para un loco, with José Angel Trelles as vocalist. That album is very rare but fortunately is available in a reissue titled Piazzolla & José Angel Trelles.

I must admit that I was not a fan of La Pat when she was at the peak of her fame in the 1980's, but as today's Patty Trossèl, I am a huge fan and hope that she will soon devote some recording time to the music of Piazzolla.

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Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Chiquilín de Bachín - Amelita Baltar

Piazzolla wrote the music, Horacio Ferrer wrote the lyrics but it wasn't a canción until Amelita Baltar sang it. The three were inseparable for a while during the creation and premiere of the operita Maria de Buenos Aires and they often dined together at a traditional porteño restaurant, Bachin. Inspired by the presence of a young boy selling roses at the Bachin, Piazzolla wrote one of his few waltzes and Ferrer found just the right poetry to capture the poignancy of the situation to create Chiquilín de Bachín. Amelita recorded it in 1969 on a 1969 Trova LP (TS 33-741). That version is difficult to find but a second version, recorded the same year, is available on the CD, Amelita Baltar Interpreta Piazzolla y Ferrer.

Amelita Baltar and Piazzolla were together for seven years, 1968-1975, and those years included the most productive period of collaboration with Ferrer (there was a second short period of collaboration in 1981, with Jairo turning their efforts into canción). Baltar has had a long and successful career as a singer and fortunately has continued to give the works of Piazzolla and Ferrer a prominent position in her repertoire. You will find many of her performances of their works on YouTube but today's featured video is new to YouTube and presents her singing Chiquilín de Bachín on an undated Argentine television production.

She sings the song as if she owns it and, in a sense, she does. She was certainly there at its birth.

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Sunday, July 3, 2011

Midsummer Night Swing

It must be one of the longest running dance parties in the world - the Midsummer Night Swing held at New York City's Lincoln Center every year since 1989. The event lasts three weeks with dancing in the plaza in front of Lincoln Center almost every night. Great bands can be expected and they cover the full dance spectrum from swing to salsa to big band to Irish to soul and, yes, to tango. This year's tango night fell on June 30th and the band was Héctor Del Curto's Eternal Tango Orchestra. You would hope that Piazzolla would be heard at the event and he was. Today's video shows the last dance of the evening and it was, the perhaps inevitable, Libertango.

I don't know if there was a night devoted to tango in that first year, 1989, but I do know that there has been one ever since 1991 - that is twenty years of tango at Midsummer Night Swing. In 1991, music was provided by Raúl Jaurena (recently featured in this blog) and Marga Mitchell - both still active in the tango world. I have not found a complete list of all the tango groups since 1991 but other featured tango artists have included the New York - Buenos Aires Connection in 1994 and 1995, Pablo Merinetti in 2001, Tanguardia in 2002, Avantango in 2004, Quintango in 2006, Orquesta Tipica Imperial in 2008, Otros Aires in 2009 and Narcotango in 2010. Héctor Del Curto, leader of this year's band, has also made appearances in 2003 with the Eternal Tango Quintet with Roxana Fontán and in 2005 and 2007 with the Eternal Tango Orchestra. That makes Del Curto and his musicians the closest thing there is to a house band for tango at Lincoln Center.

Héctor Del Curto is very definitely the go-to man for tango music in New York City. The bandoneón is in his genes - both his grandfather and his great grandfather were famous Argentine bandoneónists. At age 17, Héctor was already a world class bandoneónist who was invited to play with the legendary tango master, Osvaldo Pugliese. He has since played with many of the legends of tango including a twelve year stint as bandoneónist for the various ensembles put together by Pablo Ziegler, pianist from Piazzolla's last quintet. You have seen him in this blog in the past and you will see him again in the future.

Membership in the Eternal Tango Orchestra has changed over the years but according to their Facebook page, the current members are
Hector Del Curto, Gustavo Casenave, Pedro Giraudo, Jisoo Ok, Sami Merdinian, Nick Danielson, Sergio Reyes, David Hodges, Katie Kresek, Machiko Ozawa, and Marcelo Kazanietz. While today's video captures the spirit of the evening at Midsummer Night Swing, it does not capture the Eternal Tango Orchestra very well so I encourage you to watch their promotional video to enjoy their full effect.

If today's video does not appear below, click here.



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Libertango - Carillon Version

Once you start, it's hard to stop. Regular readers of this blog have suffered through Libertango in many versions including: Stoner, House Music, Glass Harmonica, Single Charango, Double Charango, Theremin, Tzigane, Kannel, Gugak, Bass, Mechanical, 55Ewcia, Recorders, Tche-tchet-ka!, Ocarina, Erhu and believe it or not, there were others. One more couldn't hurt.

Today's video adds a performance of Libertango on a carillon to that long list. The particular set of bells in this carillon are to be found in the town hall of Leiden, formerly best known as the birthplace of Rembrandt and the capacitor but now destined to become known more for the performance of Libertango on it's carillon by noted composer and carillonist, Magdalena Cynk on June 25, 2011.

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