Le Grand Tango

Tempo di tango - Meno mosso: libero e cantabile - Più mosso: giocoso

As Gertrude Stein might have said, a tango is a tango is a tango. But to Astor Piazzolla a tango was far more than a tango. As a classically trained composer who had studied with Alberto Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger and as a virtuoso of the bandoneon who knew tango music from the inside, Piazzolla not only updated the idiom but also extended it far beyond the dance hall. His “new tango” style might not have pleased the traditionalists of Buenos Aires but the concert pieces written under its influence are of such quality and such interest that they have fascinated many distinguished musicians. Written for Rostropovich two or three years before the composer’s death, Le grand tango is a brilliant example of how the tango can be developed in much the same way as, say, the polonaise was developed by Chopin. The familiar tango rhythms are always there somewhere under the surface, even if they are easier to identify in the quick outer sections than in the melodious and passionately extended middle section.

Tempo di tango - Meno mosso: libero e cantabile - Più mosso: giocoso

As Gertrude Stein might have said, a tango is a tango is a tango. But to Astor Piazzolla a tango was far more than a tango. As a classically trained composer who had studied with Alberto Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger and as a virtuoso of the bandoneon who knew tango music from the inside, Piazzolla not only updated the idiom but also extended it far beyond the dance hall. His “new tango” style might not have pleased the traditionalists of Buenos Aires but the concert pieces written under its influence are of such quality and such interest that they have fascinated musicians as distinguished and as diverse as Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim and Gidon Kremer.

Yo-Yo Ma knew Le Grand Tango, the cello-and-piano piece Piazzolla wrote for Rostropovich two or three years before his death, but was not particularly impressed by it until he went to Buenos Aires, met some of the instrumentalists who had worked with Piazzolla, and got to know the tango in its natural habitat. “It wasn’t till this trip,” he has said, “that suddenly it all made sense… From that time on, I was just caught up by the music.” Le Grand Tango is certainly a remarkable composition and a brilliant example of how the tango can be developed in much the same way as, say, the polonaise was developed by Chopin. The familiar tango rhythms are always there somewhere under the surface, even if they are easier to identify in the quick outer sections than in the melodious and passionately extended middle section. But the great inspiration of the piece is the way those rhythms are varied, syncopated, distorted and – particularly in the last section with its frenzied and often double-stopped cello sounds and its devastating piano part – exhilaratingly liberated from tango-bar restraints.