Astor PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992)
Cuarto Estaciones Porteñas [25:31]
Le Grand Tango [13:16]
Milonga [4:12]
Le Muerte del ángel [3:24]
Gustavo BEYTELMANN (b.1945)
Ofrenda – Homenaje à Astor Piazzolla [7:40]
Balada for Violin and Piano [6:58]
Tango for Violin and Piano [5:15]
Duke ELLINGTON (1899-1974)
Caravan [3:50]
Patagonia Express Trio
rec. December 2017, Malambo, Paris
BERLIN CLASSICS 0301569BC [70:08]
Astor Piazzolla claimed to have received death threats for his “westernization” of the Tango, a dance which, until he came along, was seen as the preserve of those who inhabited the slums of Buenos Aires. If they did not take kindly to his putting tangos into concert music, how would his opponents react to this recording of seven of his best-known tango works handed over to an ensemble which reeks of the elitism and decadence of western chamber music? Despite its south-American name, the Patagonia Express Trio is the archetypical trio of violin (Oscar Bohórquez), cello (Claudio Bohórquez) and piano (Gustavo Beytelmann), and at times, the aromas of western salon music permeate into these arrangements so strongly that it is the stately homes of Europe that come to mind, rather than the bordellos of Argentina; most obviously in the Invierno Porteño, the last for the four tangos which, together, have come to be lumped together as the “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”.
However, the Bohórquez brothers hail from Uruguay, while Gustavo Beytelmann is a native Argentinean who knew and played with Piazzolla in Paris, and the three of them have the music of Latin America coursing through their veins; something which shines through in their incisive handling of the jagged, rhythms and sensuous melodies of Piazzolla’s music. It is easy to forget with, say, the Grand Tango, that this is not an Argentinean Tango band – only a few strange reflective diversions from the piano give the game away.
I am not entirely convinced by these Piazzolla arrangements. They seem to waver uneasily between the aggression of Argentinean dance music, the sentimentality of South American song and the strait-laced tightly-reined-in emotions of Western chamber music. However, there is no doubting the conviction of the players or their passion for this music, and what sometimes seems to fall between the cracks of musical genres is held up simply by the power of their collective passion.
That passion also seeps out of the brothers’ Bohórquez essay in the booklet, which explains the close musical relationship between Beytelmann and Piazzolla, and how the former learnt of the latter’s death in 1992 and almost immediately set out his feelings of loss in the Ofrenda. To mark the centenary of Piazzolla’s birth, Beytelmann also wrote the Balada and Tango especially for the brothers’ violin and piano duo. As we might expect from a work written under such circumstances, Ofrenda is a sorrowful, heartfelt lament in which violin and cello sing their hearts out in a melancholic melody while the piano adds some reflective doodles. The players tap into the work’s slightly self-indulgent emotion and maintain a suitably sad atmosphere over the piece’s seven-and-a-half minutes’ duration. The atmosphere becomes even more desolate with the soulful violin solo, beautifully expostulated by Oscar Bohórquez, which opens Balada. Indeed, the entire piece comprises one long, sinuous, ever-evolving violin solo with gentle, guitar-like musings from the piano, ending, as it were, in mid-reflection. Tango is a far more assertive piece of Piazzolla-homage, with many of the characteristic Piazzolla devices (such as the scraping of a violin string) and infused with the angular rhythms of the dance. The musical language is, however, a little more elusive with a strange fluctuation between deep romanticism and austere atonality.
After all this sorrow and sternness, Duke Ellington’s Caravan should come as an – albeit incongruous – breath of happier air. But Beytelmann’s arrangement attempts a “Piazzollisagtion” (his word), and Ellington’s piece is turned into a complex and at times hostile take on an Argentinean tango, with only occasional snatches of Ellington’s tune popping up as islands of tranquillity in a sea of jerky and acidic movements. As with everything on this disc, the playing cannot be faulted for its commitment and obvious involvement in the music.
Marc Rochester
