Gabriel Castagna, Conductor

Background music:

Astor Piazzolla,
"Sinfonía Buenos Aires ", 2nd mov.
performed by Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen

Gabriel Castagna, conductor

"Piazzolla y Ginastera"

"Astor Piazzolla"

World Premiere Recordings
Sinfonía Buenos Aires, version by composer by symphony orchestra
Mar del Plata 70, arr. José Carli
Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, arr. Carlos Franzetti

The conductor on
‘Sinfonía Buenos Aires’

Although most of the symphonic works of the Argentine national movement are related to the gauchesco tradition, there were a few composers who approached the genre of the tango. (The gauchesco tradition represented an idealisation of the gaucho characteristic of some important Argentine writers of the nineteenth century, among them Hilario Ascasubi, Estanislao del Campo and José Hernández. Their literary idealisation in turn became a source of inspiration to artists in many other fields, searching for a symbolic national heritage.) However, it is with the work of Piazzolla that the symphonic development of this genre reached its high point. His Sinfonía Buenos Aires occupies without doubt an important place within the Argentine symphonic literature. Written in 1951 and first performed in 1953, Sinfonía Buenos Aires is the culmination of Piazzolla’s ten years of hard work exploring the possibilities of expanding the tango to larger formats. Works such as Rapsodía Porteña and the Sinfonietta are in the same line. While Sinfonía Buenos Aires may be considered an early work, it already incorporates many of the traits that Piazzolla would consolidate into his unmistakable mature style.
Its construction is an expression of a genuine symphonic way of thinking. In its three movements, different facets and manners of the tango cohabit: the Troilean melodies and the acanyengados rhythms (a term denoting a more improvised way of tango dancing practiced by the orilleros, inhabitants of the suburbs) of the first movement; the ‘Gardelian’ evocation in the exposition of the second movement; and the vibrant and visceral rhythm of the candombe (an old negro dance practiced in Buenos Aires and Uruguay, related to the origins of the tango) that opens the last movement. There is also a humorous element in the treatment of some motives (as for example in the passage of imitative trombone glissando in the first movement). In particular places this humour can become rather acid: listen for example to the repeated piccolo motive at about 2:12 and 2:25 in the second movement. It alludes to a short melody known only among the old-fashioned professional tangueros of the time, who used to attach this melody to some very coarse swearwords uttered only for very ‘unfriendly purposes’. Knowing the practical joker side of Piazzolla, we can hear this short and clearly orchestrated ‘musical expression’ as a codified (and deliberate) message addressed only to his ‘professional’ detractors, for whom his music was an unforgivable heresy. In fact, they took their role as ‘keepers of the tradition’ very seriously, provoking a scandal at the 1953 premiere at which there were, beside reproving shouts, violent fights and flying objects.
Beside this material, which so deeply embodies the spirit of Buenos Aires, influences from composers such as Bartók and Stravinsky and from jazz are incorporated by Piazzolla into music that expresses his own essence. He works the material out under his own poetical rules, producing a carefully woven weft of themes and motives that are expanded, compressed, transposed, and transfigured, by means of different technical resources, to form solid and coherent symphonic movements. In the version of Sinfonía Buenos Aires recorded here, Piazzolla eliminates the two bandoneóns that had been added for the 1953 premiere and replaces them with different instrumental groups, such as a string quartet in the second movement and a septet of winds in the last. This change in instrumentation is consistent with the composer’s later practice, for Piazzolla was not thereafter inclined to combine bandoneóns with a full symphony orchestra. Both for its intrinsic value and for its place in the musical history of Argentina, Sinfonía Buenos Aires must be considered among the most important works in the Argentine symphonic repertoire.

I am grateful to Daniel Piazzolla and his family for entrusting me with the manuscript of Sinfonía Buenos Aires, thus making possible the performance and first recording of this wonderful work in Piazzolla’s own symphonic version.The first recording of the alternative version with two bandoneons, which was titled “Buenos Aires tres movimientos sinfónicos,” was made in the early 1950s by the Orquesta de Radio del Estado conducted by Bruno Bandini.

Spanish translation

Moore about "Sinfonía Buenos Aires" (Spanish text)

Note in Perfil news - Buenos Aires, Jun 17 (Spanish)

The conductor on ‘Sinfonía Buenos Aires’

The conductor on
‘Sinfonía Buenos Aires’