Astor Piazzolla: The Central Park Concert

Performer: Astor Piazzolla
Engineer: Edward Haber; Christpher Czeh; Jane Pipik
Producer: Joe Killian
Distributor: Telarc Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Astor Piazzolla (bandoneon); Horacio Malvicino (electric guitar); Fernando Su�rez Paz (violin); Pablo Ziegler (piano). Audio Mixer: Christpher Czeh. Liner Note Author: Steve Sacks. Recording information: The Bandshell, Central Park, New York, NY (09/06/1987). Editor: Bob Katz . Photographers: Mary Kent; Stanley Schnier. This powerful concert was recorded live in New York City on September 6, 1987. Piazzolla was playing with his best ensemble: a quintet consisting of himself on bandoneon, Pablo Ziegler on piano, Fernando Suarez Paz on violin, Horacio Malvicino on electric guitar, and Hector Console on bass. Piazzolla plays some of his finest material -- about half of Tango: Zero Hour surfaces, for example. Two of the most paradigmatic Piazzolla pieces show up too: "La Camorra," with its alternating moments of tense dance rhythms and creepy atmosphere, and "Verano Porte�o," with its dancing-bear rhythms. The concert closes with "Concierto Para Quinteto," one of those long pieces that Piazzolla favored that visits many styles and moods -- almost many eras. It would be very easy to lose the thread on such an epic composition in live performance, but the quintet keeps it together admirably. The live recording is of surprisingly high quality; there is an appropriate echo and the balance is nearly perfect. The audience is completely unobtrusive -- inaudible except when they applaud. And the instruments are very clear, especially when the musicians coax those "zings" and "pops" out of them that Piazzolla loved. For someone new to his work, the "special effects" on this recording can be a revelation. There is also a wonderful spoken track, with Piazzolla talking about himself, the tango, and the mysterious bandoneon. This album is a wonderful place to start -- or finish -- with this charismatic composer of nuevo tango music. ~ Kurt Keefner

While tango had long been associated with the dancehalls of Buenos Aires, Astor Piazolla reinvented the music for the concert stage. In the 1950s and 1960s, he infused tango with the oblique harmonies of jazz and classical music, as well as new instruments such as electric guitar, and although he may have alienated traditionalists, he gained a worldwide audience seduced by his music's exotic beauty. Over the course of five decades, Piazolla continually expanded the scope of the tango--or "tango nuevo," as his music came to be called--to produce a wealth of inventive, emotionally rich music. He died in 1992.

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