Recorded versions w/ violin: Odair Assad and Fernando Suarez Paz (Piazzolas violinist) On CD: O.

Assad - Fuga y misterio, GHA 126.027 Dance of the Angel (Sony) Slava Grigoryan (his father plays violin) 3rd movement is the most difficult When first looking at the music, the first thing I worried about was the 120 tempo in Nightclub 1960: particularly the ending, and a similar section. From the very beginning, I have been working on those isolated sections as well as the rest of the piece. One part of me was dedicated to playing those sections as slowly and comfortable as possible and gradually speeding it up, while at the same time constructing some elaborate tempo disguise: play the movement just a -slight- hair under 120, and then deceptively slowing the tempo down in just the right spots in order to pull off the tough sections without it being obvious that the tempo has digressed. the flute part as written should be playable on the violin (perhaps with some minor alterations); Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla (1st 3 movements are the most often performed, this piece is excellent if you like Argentinian Tango Nuevo) http://www.piazzolla.org/biography/biography-english.html LHistoire du Tango is a suite for flute and guitar in four movements illustrating the history of the dance from its origin in Buenos Aires in 1882 to its entry into the concert hall a century later. Bordello 1900, the first movement, represents an era in which the tango was danced by prostitutes and their customers; the piece is simple, vivid, and direct. It may remind North American listeners of the ragtime music that was developing up here in the same period and social setting. Piazzolla, Astor (1921-1992) was a composer and bandonen player who revolutionized tango music. In 1924 Piazzollas family moved from Buenos Aires to New York City Astor was only three years old. They stayed there, with a brief interlude, until 1936. He listened to Cab Calloway in Harlem. Later, again in Buenos Aires, he played traditional tango on his bandonen in Anbal Troilos orchestra. In 1940 he composed a piece for Arthur Rubinstein who was in Buenos Aires on a tour. Rubinstein recognized Piazzollas talent and told him to study composition with Alberto Ginastera. With Ginastera he listened to Bartk and Stravinsky. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilothe tango scene considered this to be ingratitude and treasonbut the 25-year old went his own way and

created his own group. He introduced counterpoints, fugues and new harmonies into tango music, but it was not until the 1980s that Piazzolla became recognized in his homeland of Argentina.

With the tangos of Astor Piazzolla, as in the Baroque period, the dance becomes a genre to be listened to. With LHistoire du Tango, originally composed for flute and guitar, the composer traces a century of the evolution of the form, from the lighthearted Bordel 1900, the romantic lyricism of Caf 1930, the energy of the new tango and the bossa nova in Nightclub 1960, to a flirtation with the harmonies of Stravinsky and Bartk (and also jazz) in the Concert daujourdhui.

Piazzolla himself described his music as "Nuevo Tango" or New Tango. He defined it in these terms:- In Argentina, the presidents change and nothing is said... The bishops, the soccer players, everything can change, but not tango. It seems as if it must remain as it is: old, boring, always the same, repetitive... What is found on the surface of my music, with its classical, jazz and contemporary influences is the music of Piazzolla. But "underneath" one can feel the tango... -------------------------------The tango, it is however more than of simple notes, and it is in their projection of special qualities of the tango freedom, passion and ecstasy which the very particular talent of these interpreters resides. For the native one of Buenos Aires, portea , that I am, the tango is the background of the city: dance, music, poetry, song and the gesture, genius, and a philosophy of the life. Yo-yo Ma said itself: "the tango, it is not only the dance. It is a music made of deep subjacent currents. The history of the country made tango the heart of Argentina. When the freedom of expression of people is torn away from them, the music remains a means by which to communicate. The tangos of Piazzolla have the immense force of a voice without obstacle." Of its modest origins, the tango evolved/moved, in its gasoline, of time in time. Towards the beginning of the century, the adoption by the Parisian ones of this dance of morally suspect lower class in metamorphosed the image, at the point to make it accept by the upper middle classes of Buenos Aires. With time, the popularity of the tango disappears. The city changed, the tracks of dance made place to the coffees concert and the barrio was abandoned. Since 1955, Astor Piazzolla gives again a new vitality to him. And what was at one time the exclusive property of the musicians of the tango allures today the famous artists of all the musical kinds. Yo-yo My says this of it: "Contrary to the other tangos, those of Piazzolla are tangos which one listens to. One of my great regrets is not to have known their type-setter. To work, in Buenos Aires, with his/her colleagues musicians however brought me closer him. And today, thanks to the miracle of technology, Piazzolla and I became closer still: taking as a starting point catches of recording not published of Piazzolla to the bandonen , Jorge Calandrelli composed some notes for me, so that, in the piece entitled '

Remembrances Tango ', we play indeed together. I have now the impression to have heard, really, the breathing of Piazzolla. And all that is in this recording." Admittedly, and the type-setter Jorge Calandrelli, arranger of the album, to add: "Astor would have been magic!" The word "tango" evokes the images of Buenos Aires: a track of dance under a filtered lighting, the smoke of a cigarette being rolled up in the air, a beautiful woman in the arms of a man, giving up themselves at the rate/rhythm, at the same time, of the love and the dream, the pain and reality. "I like Buenos Aires the nostalgia which always seems, from a way or of another, outward journey of front, a company at the edge of a new identity", concludes Yo-Yo My As long as there will be musicians like him and that it will remain was this only a porteo , nights ago of tango to the gleam of the moon .