This CD offers nothing
new. It includes many of Piazzolla’s best-known works –
Milonga
del Ángel,
Libertango,
Verano Porteño and
the ubiquitous
Oblivion, which must
be one of the most arranged pieces of all time. And I have
always loved that sense of being almost lulled
into the Bach Arioso in Verano Porteño!
The real piece of interest here is the suite from the chamber
opera
María
de Buenos Aires,
from which five numbers are included. Oddly, the last of
them is from a completely different performance from the
other four. This is not as incongruous as it might seem,
however, as I could discern almost no difference
between the sound on this track and those that had gone
before it.
The arrangements on this
disc are well done for the ensemble of guitar, violin,
saxophone, piano and double bass, although I missed the
sound of Piazzolla’s own instrument, the bandoneón. None
of the performances lacks punch, however. The Versus
Ensemble plays extremely well and idiomatically and I
found the whole experience rather enjoyable. I enjoyed
the vocals of Enrique Moratalla in
Chiquilín de Bachín, Balada para un loco and the
Milonga
Carrieguera from the
María
de Buenos Aires suite but
found soprano María Rey-Joly betraying her opera house
roots far too much for this kind of music. It was also
slightly odd to hear what sounded to me like Castilian
Spanish instead of the South American dialect I thought
they might have made an effort to emulate.
María de
Buenos Aires was a collaboration between Piazzolla and
Horacio Ferrer (as was the
Balada
para un Loco) and it is good to hear his contribution
as the Duende (a kind of spiritual elf) – the
role Ferrer created for himself - in the final number
on this disc,
Milonga de la Anunciación.
The recording is excellent
throughout, with the right degree of closeness befitting
the music and seems to have been produced by the performers
themselves. The CD timing is not generous at 52:15 and
the booklet
is extremely poor; hardly any information on the music,
precious little about the performers and no texts whatsoever.
I really think Naxos should have done better with this
one.
Derek Warby
see also review by Jonathan Woolf
Enrique Moratalla
(vocals); Maria Rey-Joly (soprano); Horacio Ferrer (reciter, sung
and spoken texts); Versus Ensemble
