Prelude, Fugue and Divertimento

 In late 1971, Piazzolla expanded his Quintet to nine musicians, a group known as the Conjunto 9 or the Nonet, by the addition of a second violin, a viola, a cello and a percussionist to the existing bandoneón, electric guitar, violin, piano and contrabass. While the Conunto 9 played many arrangements of familiar Quintet tunes, Piazzolla composed a number of works uniquely for the ensemble. One of the rarer of those works is presented in today's series of videos. The work has no formal title (the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, refers to it as "the 9's") and consists of three movements: Prelude, Fugue and Divertimento. The performance is by Orquestra Filarmonica Jovem de Piracicaba under conductor and musical director Anderson Oliveira with guest soloists Eric Lawson on violin, Pedro Huff on cello, and João Paulo Casarotti on piano. The performance, the Brazilian premiere of the work, was at the concert, Casarotti Convida, at the Piracicaba Municipal Theater on 10 August, 2012. The concert was a fund raising event for the school Passo a Passo, a school for children with disabilities in the city of Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, Brazil. The musicians were all volunteers.

Piazzolla recorded the full work only once, on the recording Música Popular Contemporánea de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Vol. 2, although he did later record the Prelude and Divertimento without the Fugue suggesting that he may have considered the three as separate works.  José Bragato, the cellist in the Conjunto 9, arranged "the 9's" for piano and chamber orchestra. This was not unusual. Bragato's musical taste and instincts were totally trusted by Piazzolla and he frequently made "classical" arrangements of Piazzolla's Quintet music (and, I have heard, converted many of Piazzolla's quickly drafted scores into readable form for the Quintet). His arrangements, even today, provide the basis for most of the "classical" music performances of Piazzolla we hear.  It is probable that his arrangement of  "the 9's" was performed in Buenos Aires but it was apparently never published and really got its only broad exposure through Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica recording, Tango Ballet. The performance in today's video uses virtually the same Bragato arrangement although there are some subtle scoring differences and some not-so-subtle interpretive differences.

Since they use the same arrangement it is tempting to compare the Filamonica Jovem version to the Kremerata Baltica version, but such a comparison would be unfair.  The Kremerata Baltica version shows the perfection of studio recording while the Filamonica Jovem version comes from a handheld video camera with limited sound capability.  The sound is good enough to show that the soloists do an excellent job and that the interpretation is less lush than Kremer's although probably closer to Bragato's intent. The Jovem ensemble shows less precision than Kremer's ensemble but few can match Kremer on that count. The Orquestra Filarmonica Jovem de Piracicaba performance is internally consistant and a totally valid reading of Bragato's arrangement.  I believe that pianist, João Paulo Casarotti, who is Coordinator of Piano Studies at the Southern University-Baton Rouge, Louisiana and a DMA candidate in Piano Performance at LSU is largely responsible for bringing this work back into public view and for that, I thank him.

A more interesting comparison exists between Piazzolla's original Conjunto 9's version and the Bragato arrangement. While a copy of the Conjunto 9's recording makes it possible to compare all three movements, a video recording of the Conjunto 9 playing the Divertimento which I have included below, will allow you to make a comparison of that single movement within the confines of this blog. The differences are greater than I would have expected. Admittedly, removing an electric guitar and a bandoneón from the original creates a bit of a musical hole which Bragato usually fills with the violin, but it is not the simple replacement that creates the large differences it is, rather, the music that Bragato has chosen to leave out. There are more musicians in the orchestral score but the music is simpler. Many of the character lines have been erased. As enjoyable as the Bragato version is, I believe he has "left music on the table" and that the work deserves a new and better "classical" arrangement.  The same is true of many Piazzolla works. The beauty and excitement of the music from the Quintet and the Nonet and the Sextet and the Octet are too often "left on the table." Even the best, Bragato, did it.

If the videos do not appear below click here for the Prelude, here for the Fugue, here for the Divertimento and here for the Conjunto 9's version of Divertimento.



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