Piazzolla Stories

The rapid stream of Piazzolla releases of the years on either side of 2000 has slowed a bit, but performers keep coming up with fresh takes on his music. An example is this set of “Piazzolla Stories” by trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary. One wouldn’t immediately expect the trumpet to be well suited to Piazzolla’s music, but Vary has approached her task intelligently in several ways. For one thing, her program is not exclusively devoted to the tango master; the Stories are views into Piazzolla’s relationships with other composers who had an impact on his music in some way. These are not just the obvious ones — tango star Carlos Gardel, composer and Piazzolla’s teacher Alberto Ginastera — but also Bach, Nadia Boulanger (another teacher, and the one responsible for Piazzolla’s having selected tango as his path), and Niccolò Paganini, perhaps a stretch, but the transcriptions for trumpet are great. Further, although Oblivion is here, Vary inclines toward tango songs and the overture music from the opera María de Buenos Aires more than toward the bandoneónist’s classic tangos, where the trumpet might have an unwanted dominant role. She cultivates a gentle, melancholy tone that is appropriate to the tango surroundings, and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra also shapes itself well to the music. This may be an odd Piazzolla/classical crossover release, but give it a hearing.