Piazzolla: Complete Guitar Music

Albumbeschreibung

This disc's subtitle, "Complete Guitar Music," doesn't mean what it normally means: only one work here, the Cinco piezas, is for solo guitar. We also have music for two guitars (the Tango Suite, for violin and guitar; L'histoire du tango; and for guitar, bandoneón, and strings, the Double Concerto, "Hommage à Liège"), with the lead guitar of Italian performer Matteo Mela playing a slightly different role in each case. Still, it's both pleasant and instructive to hear all these pieces together on one program. Piazzolla's works involving guitar were all written toward the end of his life, beginning around 1980 and continuing to his final, unfulfilled commission from Mstislav Rostropovich for a concerto for cello, piano, guitar, and percussion. He wrote them with specific guitarists in mind, but the medium also intersected in intriguing ways with the larger ambitions shown by his late works in general: Piazzolla lived long enough to be hailed as a great and influential figure, and he tried to live up to his reputation with innovative new works. Two of the four works here are based on concepts unique in the Piazzolla repertoire. The Histoire du tango for violin and guitar has four movements, each representing a stage in the music's evolution from bordello (the coquettish "Bordel 1900") to café ("Café 1930," with a strolling-musician feel) and nightclub (the slinky, darkly lit "Night-Club 1960"), to the Concert d'aujourd'hui ("Concert of Today"), which serves as an (undoubtedly correct) assertion of the primary role of Piazzolla's own concert tangos. The final Double Concerto, written for a symphonic concert in Liège, Belgium, was one of several works written late in Piazzolla's life with conventional classical settings in mind; the guitar takes on the rhythmic role usually assigned to piano and percussion in Piazzolla's classic tango ensembles. Both this work and the simple, arresting Cinco Piezas call for the player to strike the body of the guitar as well as playing the strings. Mela holds together his diverse program, and he is a precise, lithe player in touch with the rhythmic essence of Piazzolla's music. This disc is recommended especially for guitarists and Piazzolla enthusiasts.
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