Piazzolla / Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet - Tango / Cuatro Estaciones Po [CD]

Astor Piazzolla's Tango Nuevo still enjoys great popularity 30 years after the composer's death. Hardly any other music is able to enthuse the classical concert audience as much as the lover of light muse, world music, or the jazz enthusiast and the specialist for contemporary music. Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet has arranged three great suites by the Argentinean grand master, which bring the rhythmic energy of the tango to the stage in highly different ways. And Valentin Butt's accordion provides the unmistakable color in the "Tango Sensations". "Estaciones Porteñas" superficially describe the Four Seasons. But they are much more than that: Buenos Aires and it's people, it's squares and streets, plus the atmosphere of a city where joy and suffering are often very close together. The music conveys pure emotion, inimitably captured from wild exhilaration to near silence. The almost 30 minutes of "Tango Sensations" are Piazzolla's musical legacy. The five composed states of mind were originally intended as film music and they are Piazzolla's last cyclical work. The "Suite del Diablo" was written as stage music and constantly oscillates between heaven and hell; the devil is sometimes fearsomely threatening, sometimes sugar-sweetly flattering - just as Piazzolla imagined life to be. For the tightrope walk between concert hall and club, between stage and street, the saxophone is the ideal instrumentation. No less than four of them offer a palette of expressive possibilities that blend perfectly with the accordion and which the Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet knows how to use with virtuosity. The dynamics of the performance are impressive and are unlikely to keep anyone in their seats.