Concierto Apiazzollado

In 2021 we celebrate the 100th birthday of argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, one of the most notorious Latin American musicians of all time. He studied composition in Paris with Nadja Boulanger, who urged him to focus his musical career on the tango, the music he grew up with and later revolutionized. His music transcended the barriers
between classical and popular music and is played alike by musicians of both styles. Concierto Apiazzollado is a tribute to this man, who gave the national music of his country a makeover and achieved international recognition for it.

The concerto is written in three movements, using the three tango styles typically played on a tango ball: tango, vals, and milonga. The first movement is based on
Piazzolla’s tango style, which he developed in the 1960s due to the conservative tradition of tango, which ruled Argentina for many years. Symbolically, this movement represents Piazzolla’s frustration and discontent with the country’s political situation, which resulted in a dictatorship that asphyxiated the freedom of expression and the arts, forcing him to flee the country by the end of the 1960s. He took then
residence in Italy, where he wrote film music, published and recorded much of his music.

The first movement features a citation from Efrain Oscher’s duo for Double Bass and Viola, Escenas del Sur, commissioned in 2009 by Edicson Ruiz. This piece is inspired by real-life events which happened during the 1970s dictatorship in Uruguay. The section cited in Concierto Apiazzollado is “luz en las tinieblas” (light in the darkness) which depicts the solitude and pain of all those incarcerated and tortured by the military during the regime. The harmonics on the guitar and strings symbolize those innocents who died in prison for simply wanting a better future in democracy.

The second movement uses the slow waltz to evoke the tradition of Italian bel-canto and thus create an atmosphere of melancholy, which represents the void and sadness of an Astor Piazzolla who exiled himself from his country. Finally, the milonga is a style very closely linked to the tango, which shows a clear African influence and is used in the third movement to celebrate the return of the maestro. The movement toggles between traditional motives which reference the milonga campera (milonga from the countryside) and others inspired by Piazzolla’s innovative style. The intention is to create a sense of elation that hints at the restlessness and concern that might have felt the artist who returned to a country that suffered terribly at a dictator’s hands.