An Astor Piazzolla MUST!
milkman john | Oxford, England | 12/25/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If you like Classical music, buy this CD. If you like Jazz, buy this CD. If you like Tango, buy this CD. This is a masterpiece, with all Astor Piazzolla's band in top form, playing with the energy and soul of a live concert.Adiós Nonino is unsurpassable, with a moving introduction by Pablo Ziegler on piano. All musicians play with deep expresiveness, complementing each other perfectly and creating a very rich sound, being both virtous (Libertango, Fracanapa)and expressive (Invierno Porteño, Adiós Nonino).I recommend this CD to anyone who likes music. I cannot understand why so many tango musicians hated Astor Piazzolla for what he did to Tango. He took it to another level completely."
Lively Live
VPerry_co_dutchess | 06/09/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"If you are new to Tango Nuevo, know that no one gets this great combination of fire and technical control as Piazzolla & company.If you've some of Astor's previous works, this is a 1983 live recording; as Astor says "it is extrememly difficult to give such a good live performance in a recording studio." There's lots of solo showcasing. Mucho bandoneon ("My bandoneon is my second wife. I make love to it. I hit it - all the things I don't do wth my wife")
If compared to "The New Tango" live recording, featuring the quintet with the adition of Gary Burton's vices, I'd say I prefer "New Tango" because of the denser rhymic textures; however the Vienna Concert showcases the bandoneon which is hidden in New Tango.1. Fracanapa : lively, bright opener.
2. Verano Porteño : Lovely, dark
3. Caliente : despite the name, tame. Like a soundtrack to laughter.
5. Libertango : Top performance here. Sizzling. Worth the CD price.
7. Invierno Porteño : as track 2, also very fine. Fine playing throughout, this CD does not deliver to me the psychic punch that Zero Hour or La Camorra do."
A new approach of feeling the tango!
Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 04/22/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The tango is a tragic crossroad. An existential detour; an everlasting pain by the anguish of having been an not be anymore: a love that died before was born, a troubling doubt and the winter hopeless inside the soul. An impossible love that it came too late and above all the tango concerns with the memory. Yours or mine, no matter the darkness makes all of we have the same identity under the neon twilight: once you crossed the forbidden line there is no way to look behind, but the tango rides on two merciless words: if and maybe. The tango is always winter, and the darkness its fellow partner.
Astor Piazzolla made a glorious with this overwhelming ensemble. Verano Porteño is simply an evanescent old picture inside a memories book. The insight textures interweaved by Astor mean a real journey through our otherness loaded with elegant rapture and discrete virility, and that it can be perceived in Caliente.
Decarísimo is an apparent happy statement, a half smile in the rainy and lonely night. An impressive and heartfelt homage to the dead love affairs, hidden lovers and forbidden loves.
Libertango works out as an incisive wound in the center of the soul. The musical obstinate is listened over and over with light and shadows modulations that appear and vanish suddenly as fugacious memories in a tired body and a spirit lack of the joy of living.
Revirado is a lovely theme; it goes directly to our youth roots when the time was our slave and the life was an eternal whisper.
And finally we have arrived to the two highlights tracks of the record: Invierno Porteño a real poem in which the words are explicit though we can not listen them. It' s a nocturnal theme, where the dignity, the sadness and the melancholy permeate the first two minutes of the work. Then a sudden change of character will allow to show the main motive , a lovely and introspective Chamber Etude; the Bandoneón writes its heart rending complaints but without self indulgence or pity. There' s a serene grief floating in the rest of the piece.
Adios Nonino perhaps is the most intimate personal portrait ever written by A.P. Dedicated to his father's memory . It's absolutely notorious the admirable and growing up poetry that makes a real journey since the childhood and the adolescence, the leit motive erects as a transient link that works out such a warm solitude that cries for his absent father. And then the fury and rage will appear briefly defying the destiny, a return to the opening theme will raise to the farewell theme of admirable courage and hope that vanish through an incredible pianissimo.
If you really want to explore the grandness of this Legendary Giant Artist, come for this record. It will engage you from the first bars.
Unforgettable issue.
"
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1
