The tangos of
Astor Piazzolla have undergone various kinds of interpretation since the death of the great composer, bandoneón player, and bandleader; musicians have inflected them, with varying degrees of success, in the direction of classical music, rock, jazz, and pop. Playing
Piazzolla's music as it was written -- for it was indeed notated music, more so than Gershwin's was -- has been done comparatively rarely, with just a few other entrants in the field beyond the present release. Perhaps the idea is that
Piazzolla's own recordings are available for those who wish to hear the music "straight," but, for a variety of reasons, it's not that simple. For one thing,
Piazzolla's music, to a greater or lesser degree, was intended for performance by others as well as by his own group. And, somewhat paradoxically, there is no fixed version of famous pieces like Oblivion (track 8), which
Piazzolla recorded with various ensembles; it is heard here in its vocal version, slinkily sung by Beatriz Suárez Paz. The Quinteto Suárez Paz finds a path through the complexities involved, producing a disc that will be enjoyable for casual tango lovers as well as those interested in the musical issues raised by his work. The musicians are shown in the booklet playing from notated music on stands, and they basically reproduce
Piazzolla works, or hybrids of various versions of works. They replicate what is arguably the definitive
Piazzolla group, the so-called "second quintet" of the late '70s and 1980s (of which director Fernando Suárez Paz was a member for a while), with its combination (shared by
Piazzolla's earlier quintet) of bandoneón, piano, violin, guitar, and bass, and its slightly freer sound as compared with the earlier group. And they use printed versions of big pieces like the Milonga-Muerte-Resurreción del Ángel trilogy, combining these with lesser-known pieces like Revirado, for which no standard version exists. The end result is music that sounds quite a bit like
Piazzolla's Quinteto Tango Nuevo, but picks it apart a bit, with lots of the syncopated inner lines of the music brought out clearly but less of the murky night atmosphere that makes
Piazzolla distinctive. In all, it's about what you'd expect from a
Piazzolla tribute album. Notes are in Spanish and French.