Astor Piazzolla: The Four Seasons and other Tangos

Ensemble Tangueando brings together flute, bandoneon and piano in a distinctive combination. The flute, an instrument used in early tango, contributes the colours of classical music; the bandoneon is emblematic of the music of Buenos Aires; and the piano completes the ensemble. Following a period of study, and with a commitment to continually developing its repertoire, the group performs dance music from the historical tango tradition—including works by Bardi, Demare, Gardel, Pugliese, Troilo and Villoldo—for milongas, alongside concert programmes devoted to some of Astor Piazzolla’s most representative works. The ensemble has performed at numerous milongas and concerts.

Giovanni Miszczyszyn graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin, where he studied with Arturo Danesin. He further developed his understanding of eighteenth-century performance practice through parallel studies of the Baroque transverse flute with Barthold Kuijken and Pierre Séchet. He attended masterclasses with Aurèle Nicolet, Maxence Larrieu and Jean-Pierre Rampal. A prizewinner in national and international competitions, he has collaborated with musicians including Nigel Rogers, Fabio Biondi and Gaetano Nasillo.

Ezio Borghese began studying the accordion at the music school founded by Berto Berti. He has taken part in numerous competitions as a soloist, in an accordion duo and in orchestral ensembles. His duo won first prize at the City of Lecco International Competition in 1984. As a member of the accordion sextet Accordion Ensemble, he won first prize in the chamber-group category at the XXII “Città di Castelfidardo” International Competition in 1997.

Enrico Gianino graduated in composition from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin, studying with Silvana Di Lotti and Gilberto Bosco. He studied piano with Roberto Cognazzo, Andrea Genovese and Maria Luisa Pacciani, and subsequently with Umberto Santoro, graduating with distinction from the G. F. Ghedini Conservatory in Cuneo. He has an extensive career as an accompanist, working with opera singers and instrumental soloists including Steven Mead, Ian Bousfield and Marco Pierobon. His collaborators also include Tommaso Lama, Furio Di Castri, Piero Leveratto, Roberto Regis and Aldo Mella.

Astor Piazzolla: (b Mar del Plata, 11 March 1921; d Buenos Aires, 5 July 1992). Argentine composer, bandleader and bandoneón player. A child prodigy on the bandoneón, Piazzolla and his family emigrated to New York in 1924; in his teens he became acquainted with Gardel, for whom he worked as a tour guide, translator and occasional performer. Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires in 1937 where he gave concerts and made tango arrangements for Aníbal Troilo, a leading bandleader; he also studied classical music with Ginastera. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilo’s band to form the Orquesta del 46 as a vehicle for his own compositions. A symphony composed in 1954 for the Buenos Aires PO won him a scholarship to study in Paris with Boulanger, who encouraged him in the composition of tangos; the following year he resettled in Argentina and formed the Octeto Buenos Aires and, later, the Quinteto Nuevo Tango, which performed at his own club, Jamaica. Piazzolla left Argentina in 1974, settling in Paris, where he composed a concerto for bandoneón and a cello sonata for Rostropovich, among other works.
Piazzolla’s distinctive brand of tango, later called ‘nuevo tango’, initially met with resistance. Including fugue, extreme chromaticism, dissonance, elements of jazz and, at times, expanded instrumentation, it was condemned by the old-guard, including not only most tango composers and bandleaders but also Borges, whose short story El hombre de la Esquina Rosada was the basis for Piazzolla’s El tango (1969); like tango itself, Piazzolla’s work first found general approval outside Argentina, principally in France and the USA. By the 1980s, however, Piazzolla’s music was widely accepted even in his native country, where he was now seen as the saviour of tango, which during the 1950s and 60s had declined in popularity and appeal. In the late 1980s Piazzolla’s works began to be taken up by classical performers, in particular the Kronos Quartet, who commissioned Five Tango Sensations (1989). In all he composed about 750 works, including film scores for Tangos: the Exile of Gardel (1985) and Sur (1987). Shortly before his death, he was commissioned to write an opera on the life of Gardel.