Astor Piazzolla: Las Estaciones del Ángel

Andrea Dindo is an Italian pianist and conductor. A pupil of Renzo Bonizzato, he pursued advanced piano studies with Aldo Ciccolini and Andrzej Jasiński at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and with Alexis Weissenberg at the international masterclass in Engelberg. A prizewinner at a chamber-music competition in Paris, he has performed at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Pablo Casals Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and for Radio France.

His recordings encompass chamber repertoire and a complete survey of Liszt’s music for violin and piano. He made his conducting debut at Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica and has worked with orchestras including I Pomeriggi Musicali, the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto. His teaching has included operatic repertoire at the Bonporti Conservatory in Trento. On Da Vinci’s Las Estaciones del Ángel, he joins double bassist Enrico Fagone in Piazzolla’s Ave Maria.

Cesare Chiacchiaretta devoted himself to the study of the accordion at a very young age, taking up the bandoneon later. He studied under M° Claudio Calista, graduating with distinction at the Conservatory of Bari in 1995. He perfected his skills under renowned maestros such as Max Bonnay, Vladimir Zubitsky and Mogens Ellegaard. He was awarded in the most important national and international competitions and in 1993 is the winner of PIF Castelfidardo Premio Category. Performing more than 1,000 concerts in 35 countries in the world he played solo with important orchestras: Italian Radio Switzerland Orchestra, Kaunas Chamber Orchestra ,Bacau Symphony Orchestra, Queretaro Symphony Orchestra, I Virtuosi of Moscow, Lugansk Philarmonie, Kiev Philarmonica, Baden Baden Philarmonie, Brazos Valley Orchestra (USA), Chamber Orchestra of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, East Western Orchestra (South Korea), Salzburg Soloists, Sanremo Philarmonic Orchestra, etc. He played under the direction of Maestro RICCARDO MUTI at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. He collaborated with Eddie Daniels and in 2008 he played as a bandoneonist with Fernando Suarez Paz.In 2011 he won the Astor Piazzolla Award for the dissemination of the compositions of the great Argentine master. He is accordion teacher at the Conservatorio Statale di musica in Foggia.His masterclasses are scheduled in the Universities of Missoula (Montana-USA), St. Petersburg (Russia), Loyola University (Los Angeles-USA) and Beijing Central Conservatory.

Daniel Rivera is an Argentine-born pianist and teacher from Rosario. He established an international career through major piano competitions and performances as a soloist and chamber musician. His repertoire ranges from the classical tradition to twentieth-century music, and his recordings include works by Beethoven, Liszt and Boulez. His collaborations with Martha Argerich include two-piano performances and the 2012 Rosario concerts represented on Las Estaciones del Ángel. He has taught in Livorno and at several Italian music academies.

Enrico Fagone, Double-Bass
is appointed principal double bass in the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (OSI) since 2004 and professor at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana since 2010. His artistic activity is divided between the performance and conducting. He is regularly invited by the most prestigious festivals worldwide, and regularly performs with Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkeanzy, Ivry Gitlis, Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin, Katia and Marielle Labèque. As conductor and soloist he has been invited by London Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin, Cagliari Theatre Orchestra, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, I Virtuosi Italiani, the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, LaVerdi the Milan Symphony Orchestra Giuseppe Verdi, the Chamber Orchestra of Padova e del Veneto, the Munich Chamber Opera, FOI Filarmonica dell’Opera Italiana, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, to name but a few.
E.F. devotes much of his energy to making new compositions known, music written today for today's audience. Performing music of our present time, conducting pieces by living composers and proposing new sound gestures are a priority in his artistic career.
E.F. regularly holds master classes at The Juilliard School (New York), Royal College of Music (London), Mozarteum (Salzburg), Royal Danish Academy, Toho Gakuen (Tokyo) and Paris Conservatory CNSMDP.
E.F. studied in Piacenza with Leonardo Colonna and completed his studies in double bass with Franco Petracchi and Klaus Stoll. He studied conducting at the Abbado School, in Milano, later he completed his studies with Jorma Panula in Helsinki. E.F. studied composition with Jorge. A. Bosso.
E.F. is artistic director of the Bottesini Competition, Music Director of the Long Island Orchestra in New York and Ambassador of the Martha Argerich Project.

Fernando Suarez Paz was a musician, violinist and director Argentine who was part of the Orchestra National Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires. Born in the province of Buenos Aires, he began his musical studies at the age of five, playing the violin. As a young man, he joined the LRA Radio del Estado Youth Symphony Orchestra. He specialized in the genre of tango, he was a regular in the top positions of the groups and orchestras of which he was part. Later he joined the National Symphony Orchestra of Buenos Aires. He was for more than seventeen years as concertmaster of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Burt Bacharach, Lalo Schifrin, Michel Legrand and Waldo de los Ríos. Due to his way of interpreting music, for which he demonstrated innovative talent and creativity, in the mid-1970s he was part of the band Los 7 del Tango under the direction of Luis Stazo. He participated in the creation of the Sexteto mayor in 1978, of which he was a part until in 1988 the group dissolved and he became a member of the Quinteto Nuevo Tango. In Quinteto Nuevo Tango he performed with Astor Piazzolla for ten years. During this period Suárez Paz under the direction of Piazzolla, showed his creative capacities and the musical quality that the quintet achieved, with the interpretation of songs such as Escualo, dedicated to the Argentine composer and director who wrote the pieceAt the end of his stage in Quinteto Nuevo Tango, he played with Gary Burton at festivals in Europe, Japan, and the United States. As a soloist he performed and recorded the Piazzolla Nacar Concert in 1993, with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pedro Ignacio Calderón. From that moment on he made recitals and records as a soloist, for example as a performer of the Concert in Negrorian Song for violin and orchestra, dedicated to him by the composer and conductor Gabriel Senanes. The following year he was appointed musical director of the Astor Tango production, consisting of a series of recitals around the composer. He made a new tour of the United States in 2000 with Springs for Piazzolla. He was invited by to attend the Steinway Festival in Manchester. In 2001 he traveled to Europe where he toured with the Assad Duo, he was invited to the Bergen Music Festival. On July 4, he held the opening of the Astor Triunfal cycle at the Colón Theater in Buenos Aires, in the tribute made to Piazzolla on the tenth anniversary of his death. He formed a duo with the pianist Osvaldo Requena. He was a member of the groups of Horacio Salgán, Miguel Caló, Fulvio Salamanca, Pedro Laurenz, Aníbal Troilo, Mariano Mores, Atilio Stampone, Leopoldo Federico, Osvaldo Requena, Néstor Marconi, Osvaldo Berlingieri and Raúl Garello. He died on September 12, 2020 at the Sanatorio La Trinidad, in Pilar. He was Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires. [ 3 ]In 2005, the National Academy of Tango paid him a tribute on his 50th anniversary as a musician. In 2019, he won  Latin Grammy Best Tango Album, Revolutionary performed by the Astor Piazzolla Quintet.

Gabriele Baldocci is a pianist and composer whose work brings together concert performance, recording, improvisation and original composition. His musical formation included studies with William Grant Naboré and encounters with Leon Fleisher and Alicia de Larrocha. He has appeared at venues including Zurich’s Tonhalle, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Vienna’s Musikverein and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.

His recorded repertoire ranges from Chopin and Respighi to Nino Rota and Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies. Sheer Piano Attack reimagines the music of Queen through a Lisztian pianistic idiom. Collaborations have included Martha Argerich, Daniel Rivera and Ivry Gitlis, alongside artists from other musical and theatrical traditions. Baldocci also composes music shaped by memory, silence and improvisation, and combines his performing career with teaching at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. He founded the London Piano Centre and Milton Keynes Music Academy. His Da Vinci discography includes an appearance on Las Estaciones del Ángel.

Luis Bacalo: Argentine-Italian film composer who learned music from Enrique Barenboim, father of Daniel Barenboim, and also Berta Sujovolsky. Bringing his talent into society he ventured into music for the cinema, and composed scores for Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s, he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, winning it in 1996 for Il Postino. Bacalov composed significant works for chorus and orchestra.

Lyda Chen is a Geneva-born violist. She initially studied violin with Ayla Erduran at the Geneva Conservatory and with Lin Yao Ji at Beijing’s Central Conservatory. After completing a law degree at the University of Geneva, she turned to the viola and developed her chamber-music work, including studies with Gábor Takács.

Her collaborations with Martha Argerich led to appearances at festivals including Verbier, La Roque d’Anthéron, Salzburg and Progetto Argerich in Lugano. She has performed at the Teatro Colón, Salle Pleyel, the Salzburg Mozarteum and Shanghai Grand Theatre, and as a soloist at Zurich’s Tonhalle. Her activities also include orchestral collaborations and viola and chamber-music masterclasses in Europe, China and Latin America. In 2019 she founded Arch Music Academy, promoting a multidisciplinary approach to music-making. Recordings from the Lugano Festival include chamber works by Beethoven, Dvořák, Schumann, Fauré, Franck and Shostakovich. She appears on Da Vinci’s Las Estaciones del Ángel alongside Martha Argerich, Enrico Fagone and other collaborators.

Marco Colacioppo studied piano with Nicola Calabrese and with Nazzareno Carusi, graduating in piano and harpsichord respectively at the "S. Cecilia" conservatory in Rome and "L. D'Annunzio" conservatory in Pescara. He subsequently graduated with 110/110 cum laude in musical disciplines-chamber music; the meetings with Viktor Merzhanov (professor at the "Tchaikovsky" Conservatory in Moscow), Alexander Lonquich, Paul Badura-Skoda, those in Austria with the famous pianist Maestro Jörg Demus and with Pier Narciso Masi at the prestigious International Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" in Imola also contributed to his artistic and cultural training. He has held concerts for important theaters and concert seasons in Italy, U.S.A. Argentina, Russia, Hungary, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Lithuania.
Chosen by Fernando Suarez Paz, the violinist of the famous “Quinteto Nuevo Tango”, founded by Astor Piazzolla, he performed for important Italian and foreign theaters. In Lugano, the Quartetto Suarez Paz held a live recorded recital at the headquarters of the Italian Swiss Television Radio (RSI - Rete 2). He performed, on the occasion of the 46th edition of the "Campiello Prize 2008" at the "La Fenice" theater in Venice live on Rai 1. He has also played and collaborated with artists such as Richard Galliano, Luigi Piovano, Massimo Spadano, Paolo Morena, Enrico Fagone, Cesare Chiacchiaretta, Corrado Giuffredi, Walter Zagato, and was directed by Domenico Losavio, Marco Zuccarini, Flavio Scogna, Giancarlo De Lorenzo, Eduardo Hubert. He was also invited to be part of the juries of various national and international competitions.

Martha Argerich: Argentine pianist. Her teachers were Ernestine de Kussrow, Vicente Scaramuzza, Gulda, Askenase, Michelangeli, Madeleine Lipatti and Magaloff. She made her début at the age of eight in Buenos Aires performing Mozart’s D minor Concerto k466, Beethoven’s First Concerto and Bach’s French Suite no.5. She also played the finale of Beethoven’s E flat Sonata op.31 no.3 for Gieseking, who expressed his unease at the possible dangers of such early precosity. Argerich achieved her first international recognition at the age of 16 when she won first prizes in the 1957 Busoni and Geneva international competitions. She made her London début in 1964, and in 1965 won first prize in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where her playing was described as ‘volcanic’. Yet even before Warsaw she recorded, at the age of 19, an album for DG which included performances of the Prokofiev Toccata and Liszt’s Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody sufficiently fluent and imperious to arouse Horowitz’s wonder. Since that time Argerich’s appearances have been notoriously unpredictable; perhaps surprisingly, she has been most frequently heard in chamber music, notably in partnership with Nelson Freire, Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky. Her appearances in the concerto repertory are rare, and her solo recitals even rarer, although such absenteeism is less the result of caprice than an instinct for survival and a refusal to compromise. She has remained wary of a return to a brilliant but fraught career which saw her making as many as 150 appearances a year and which increasingly left her more exhausted than elated. Argerich’s recorded legacy is, however, surprisingly large and varied; and here her fiery virtuosity is invariably combined with an acutely poetic lyricism. Whether in her superbly disciplined Bach, her joyous, volatile early Beethoven concertos or her highly charged playing of the Romantic repertory – of Tchaikovsky, Skryabin and Rachmaninoff as well as Chopin, Schumann and Liszt – Argerich’s performances are as inward as they are vital, of a unique musical intuition and charisma.

Néstor Marconi, born on 15 June 1942, is an Argentine bandoneonist, composer, arranger and orchestrator. From the 1970s he worked with major figures in tango, including Horacio Salgán, Astor Piazzolla, Héctor Stamponi and Enrique Francini. He participated in Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer’s María de Buenos Aires and later brought tango into international concert settings, performing Piazzolla’s bandoneon concerto, his own arrangements and original compositions with orchestras around the world.

In 1997 he toured with Yo-Yo Ma in a programme based on Piazzolla’s music; his other projects include Lalo Schifrin’s Esperanto and his own Tangos Concertantes, performed with Martha Argerich. Marconi received Konex awards in 1985, 1995 and 2005, and has directed the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires and the Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce. On Da Vinci’s Las Estaciones del Ángel, he appears as both performer and composer.

The Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto was founded in October 1966 and developed from a chamber orchestra into a central institution in the musical life of Padua and the Veneto region. Its programmes extend from Baroque music to contemporary works, combining established repertoire with new compositions. In 2011 the organisation became a foundation supported by the Municipality of Padua, the Province of Padua and the Veneto Region.

Its artistic history includes Claudio Scimone, Peter Maag, Bruno Giuranna and Mario Brunello; Maag served as principal conductor from 1983 to 2001. The orchestra has collaborated with international soloists and conductors including Martha Argerich, Salvatore Accardo, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Riccardo Chailly and Sir Neville Marriner, and maintains a substantial concert and recording activity. On Da Vinci Classics’ Las Estaciones del Ángel, the orchestra performs Piazzolla under Luis Bacalov, with Enrico Fagone as double-bass soloist.

Quartetto Suarez Paz unites violinist Fernando Suarez Paz, bandoneon player Cesare Chiacchiaretta, pianist Marco Colacioppo and double bassist Enrico Fagone. The ensemble explores Astor Piazzolla’s music through the distinctive dialogue of violin, bandoneon, piano and double bass. Its live album El Alma preserves the collaboration of Piazzolla’s longstanding violinist with three Italian musicians.

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.

Jorge A. Bosso: During the last years J.B. composed music that has more to do with a conceptual idea. Result of his compositional path is Kohelet for violin, cello and mixed choir based on the Ecclesiastes; Duo I and Duo II for violin and cello; Piano Trio for violin, cello and piano, String Quartet N°1/Lachrymose; Requiem for mixed choir, soprano and cello; MOSHEE for cello and 17 strings; Bridges based on the Preludes and Fugues op. 87 by Shostakowitsch for female choir and ensemble; Je Suis Surikov Kazakh Russe for baritone, violin, cello, Russian folk group, orchestra, mixed choir and children choir commissioned by the Municipality of Krasnoyarsk. On 2018 J.B. was commissioned two major works – Der Dichter spricht Schumann/Bosso and Das Buchstabenhaus - by the Wiener Staatsoper.
On January 2014 Decca released his version of Piazzolla’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas for cello and strings, performed by Enrico Dindo and I Solisti di Pavia. During the same year J.B. premiered Tre Meditazioni for mixed choir a cappella and cello at the cathedral of Vicenza, commissioned by the Festival Biblico during the opening speech of the cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. J.B. had the privilege to make an offer of the composition to the Pope in October 2015 – published by Casa Musicale Sonzogno.
On the fall of 2014 J.B. conducted the premiere of VALENTINA! Un violoncello a fumetti at Teatro Fraschini with Enrico Dindo and I Solisti di Pavia. J.B. conducted Es Muss Sein!, commissioned by Mario Brunello, at Teatro La Fenice.
He also chose to propose works from the past, through a different perspective. Der Frühling der Minnesänger (Bach/Bosso) for violin and mixed choir, Debussy Cello Sonata (for cello and strings and for cello and symphonic orchestra), Strauss violin/piano Sonata op.18, Debussy Violin Sonata and Ravel Posthume Sonata for violin and symphonic orchestra. The premieres had been performed by Enrico Dindo/Gavriel Lipkind (cello) and Dora Schwarzberg (violin).

Néstor Marconi is an Argentine composer and bandoneonist whose work connects tango with concert music. Read his artist biography.