Astor Piazzolla: Milonga sin palabras
Claudio Constantini: Suite latinoamericana
Alejandro Schwarz: Calles lejanas
Astor Piazzolla: 3 minutos con la realidad
Astor Piazzolla: Ausencias
Alejandro Schwarz: La despareja
Astor Piazzolla: Muerte del ángel
Sabrina Condello: Violin
François Daudet: Piano
David Louwerse: Cello
Victor Hugo Villena: Bandoneon
Another summer night in Dieulefit, another concert organized by the Chemins de Pierre association as part of its annual “Journées Musicales de Dieulefit” (Musical Days of Dieulefit). For last Saturday night, we had been promised an exciting-sounding tango evening featuring highly popular festival regulars that are pianist François Daudet, who is also its artistic director, and cellist David Louwerse, along with newcomers Sabrina Condello, a wildly eclectic French violinist, and Victor Hugo Villena, a world-renowned Argentinian bandoneonist, in the small Église Saint-Pierre.
The new phone-only ticketing system that had created serious confusion the previous evening did not fare much better on Saturday (My mom had the seat she had reserved, but I did not have any seat at all because, while my reservation had been recorded, the seat I had requested next to her somehow had been assigned to somebody else, so I ended up in the back of the church. Le sigh). But the atmosphere was festive, the line-up promising, and while my spot was less than desirable, it also happened to be located right behind our friends Jacques and Jacqueline, which gave us the perfect opportunity to catch up.
The concert started with two pieces that Daudet called “amuse-bouches” in his opening speech. Due to my far away location, and despite the superior acoustics, I was not able to hear most of the introduction by Sabrina Condello, but the frustration associated to that lack of intel disappeared quickly once she and Villena started to play what to my untrained ear would qualify as “deconstructed tango”. The style was boldly modern, the performance effortlessly virtuosic, and the two mystery pieces set the tone for a truly entertaining evening full of discoveries and adventures.
We finally kicked off the official program with Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Opus 7, the less tango-flavored piece of them all, which had Condello and Louwerse pair up for an intriguing little experience combining Hungarian folk music’s lively rhythms and classical music’s more formal structures. I am pleased to report that it worked like a charm.
A tango-centric concert obviously must include Astor Piazzolla, the composer whose influence on tango simply cannot be overstated, and there he was next in line. Written for his wife, “Milonga sin palabras” (Milonga without words) was a discreet entrance, but its gentle lyricism and understated melancholy clearly came through and moved all of us.
Peru-born and Spain-residing pianist, bandoneonist and composer Claudio Constantini released his crossover work Suite latinoamericana that blends Western European classical music, Argentinean tango, and other Latin American popular genres back in 2013, but as played by Daudet and Villega last Saturday, it sounded as fresh and inventive as if it had been created yesterday.
After having performed in various configurations, the four musicians got together for “Calles lejanas” by Alejandro Schwarz and never left the stage again for the rest of the evening. Fully powered up by this quadruple force, those “distant streets” decisively took us on a short but engaging journey.
We went back to Piazzolla for what turned out my favorite part of the concert with the double feature of “3 minutos con la realidad”, which were three exciting minutes in the chaotic reality of big cities like Buenos Aires or New York City, and “Ausencias”, a quintessential nuevo tango song that which beautifully evoked the unavoidable nostalgia brought by the “absences” of the ones we love and miss.
More tango was served with Alejandro Schwarz’s “La despareja”, whose “unmatched” nature was still attractive despite its quirky kinks.
And the official program wrapped up with a dynamite take on Piazzolla’s “La muerte del ángel”, one of his most dazzling masterpieces that includes a brilliant structure, relentless energy, nonstop drama, a touch of jazz, and a unique mix of classical and new. There was no stopping the musicians who dove into it head-first with infectious jubilation and took it all the way to the finish line.
Speaking of Piazzolla’s masterpieces, the loudly requested encore was a soaringly beautiful version of—What else?—“Oblivion”, which has to be the only tango tune that I, and apparently countless other tango neophytes in the audience, would instantly recognize and swoon to. And we did.
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