Yo-Yo Ma might seem like an unlikely protagonist for the tango, but this intrepid musical explorer has taken his task seriously, collaborating with experienced tango musicians. Ma even participates in a posthumous collaboration with one 1987 Piazzolla recording. Furthermore, while he's obviously the headliner here, he doesn't dominate the arrangements nearly as much as he does the billing and photography of the disc. While the result isn't your essential Piazzolla album (that would have to include more of the composer's own playing), it's an atmospheric and convincing collection, perhaps a good introduction for those who don't know the music. --L.G.
I quote from this disc’s insert commentary: “Tango is more than just notes ... [with its] rhythm that is at once love and dream, pain and reality [and] its special qualities of freedom, passion and ecstasy ... it is dance, poetry, song and gestures, ethos and a philosophy of life.”
Gulping hard after that rhapsody, I turn to the music itself. Yo-Yo Ma is the latest international artist to surrender to the spell of this Argentinian dance now enjoying a new wave of popularity: he can also be heard on the soundtrack of the film The Tango Lesson. Here, surrounded by a brilliant group of experts in the genre (some of them associates of Piazzolla himself), he presents with an evident wholehearted commitment a well-varied programme – ranging from the melancholy or sultry to the energetic or fiery – of Piazzolla pieces both familiar and unfamiliar. Among the latter, Fugata is ingenious, Mumuki richly eloquent, and Tres minutos con la realidad nervily edgy: in this last, Kathryn Stott understandably earned the admiration of her Argentinian colleagues. She also shines with Yo-Yo Ma in an exciting performance of the cello-and-piano duo Le Grand Tango: his playing in the Milonga del angel is outstandingly beautiful. Special mention must also be made of some spectacular virtuosity by the Assad brothers in the Tango Suite. The characteristic bandoneon is featured with the cellist in Cafe 1930; and by technological trickery Yo-Yo Ma partners Piazzolla himself (recorded in 1987) in a confection called Tango Remembrances.
Those who are already fans of this genre will be in no need of encouragement to procure this disc: others would find it perhaps the most persuasive demonstration yet of the extent to which this dance has transcended its low-class Buenos Aires origins. --Lionel Salter, Gramophone
Gulping hard after that rhapsody, I turn to the music itself. Yo-Yo Ma is the latest international artist to surrender to the spell of this Argentinian dance now enjoying a new wave of popularity: he can also be heard on the soundtrack of the film The Tango Lesson. Here, surrounded by a brilliant group of experts in the genre (some of them associates of Piazzolla himself), he presents with an evident wholehearted commitment a well-varied programme – ranging from the melancholy or sultry to the energetic or fiery – of Piazzolla pieces both familiar and unfamiliar. Among the latter, Fugata is ingenious, Mumuki richly eloquent, and Tres minutos con la realidad nervily edgy: in this last, Kathryn Stott understandably earned the admiration of her Argentinian colleagues. She also shines with Yo-Yo Ma in an exciting performance of the cello-and-piano duo Le Grand Tango: his playing in the Milonga del angel is outstandingly beautiful. Special mention must also be made of some spectacular virtuosity by the Assad brothers in the Tango Suite. The characteristic bandoneon is featured with the cellist in Cafe 1930; and by technological trickery Yo-Yo Ma partners Piazzolla himself (recorded in 1987) in a confection called Tango Remembrances.
Those who are already fans of this genre will be in no need of encouragement to procure this disc: others would find it perhaps the most persuasive demonstration yet of the extent to which this dance has transcended its low-class Buenos Aires origins. --Lionel Salter, Gramophone
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