Dear Friends,

The main idea of the Past Meets Present program is to bring the music of Osvaldo Golijov and Astor Piazolla together. Golijov, a tango nuevo composer of the younger generation, was heavily influenced by the grandmaster of tango nuevo, Piazolla, who singlehandedly created this way of playing concert tango. Of course Piazzolla’s music is very much based on the Argentinean dance and influenced by his time as a bandoneon player in a Buenos Aires night club, but it is also so much more. His compositions defy boundaries and have become a unique musical genre on their own. One of the reasons for this is that Piazzolla was a classically-trained composer who even studied composition in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. In his compositions, his Argentinean tango background and his knowledge of classical composition styles mix together to the new form of the “tango nuevo.” One of the most defining moments as a composer Piazzolla describes as following:

When I met [Nadia Boulanger], I showed her my kilos of symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible sentence: "It's very well written." And stopped, with a big period, round like a soccer ball. After a long while, she said: "Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartók, like Ravel, but you know what's wrong? I can't find Piazzolla in this." And she began to investigate my private life: what I did, what I did and did not play, if I was single, married, or living with someone, she was like an FBI agent! And I was very ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician. Finally I said, "I play in a night club." I didn't want to say cabaret. And she answered, "Night club, mais oui, but that is a cabaret, isn't it?" "Yes", I answered, and thought, "I'll hit this woman in the head with a radio…." It wasn't easy to lie to her. She kept asking: "You say that you are not pianist. What instrument do you play, then?" And I didn't want to tell her that I was a bandoneón player, because I thought, "Then she will throw me from the fourth floor." Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: "You idiot, that's Piazzolla!" And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds.

We have included Piazzolla’s perhaps most well-known work “Estaciones portenas” (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) into the program, which features a violin soloist, like Vivaldi’s famous “Four Seasons.”

At the start of the second half you will be able to hear Osvaldo Golijov´s “Last Round,” a piece for double chamber orchestra written in honor of Astor Piazzolla, who was one of the most influential composers for Golijov. The orchestra will be split in two groups which “battle” it out musically. The first half of the piece is very aggressive and is both inspired by a short story on boxing by Julio Cortazar as well as by Piazzolla’s reputation of getting into fights. The second part is a lamentation completely opposite in character and, here, the two orchestra groups rather melt musically into each other. The change from group to group loses the struggling impression and gives way to a more peaceful idea of playing alternately. The Grammy Award winning Golijov describes the ideas behind the piece following:

I composed Last Round in 1996, prompted by Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman. They heard a sketch of the second movement, which I had written in 1991 upon hearing the news of Piazzolla's stroke, and encouraged me to finish it and write another movement to complement it. The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar, the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla's spirit to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life). The piece is conceived as an idealized bandoneon. The first movement represents the act of a violent compression of the instrument and the second a final, seemingly endless opening sigh (it is actually a fantasy over the refrain of the song 'My Beloved Buenos Aires', composed by the legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930's). But Last Round is also a sublimated tango dance. Two quartets confront each other, separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.

As the main classical work in the concert, we will play Joseph Haydn´s last and most famous Symphony No. 104. It was the last of his 12 London symphonies that marked a special triumph for the late Haydn. Story goes that Haydn was so impressed by London that he suggested to his friend Mozart to also go to London and continue the career there. Haydn wrote into his diary on that occasion:

The whole company was thoroughly pleased and so was I. I made 4000 gulden on this evening: such a thing is possible only in England.

Haydn is quite famous for including “unusual” ideas into his symphonies and then weaving them artfully into great a musical picture (see also his surprise symphony with a heavy timpani hit in the otherwise quiet slow movement, “to wake the people up,” as he said). In his London symphony, the second movement is based on a theme that includes all main intervals but still manages to sound like a “normal,” regular musical theme on which the music of the whole movement is based. The last movement is based on a folk music motive that is played over a single long bass note and gives the theme a nearly medieval touch. It is easy to imagine a farmer´s festivity where everyone is dancing to the music of a bard. However, also in this case, Haydn manages to weave the theme into the classical movement in a way that seems so logical and natural. This is one of Haydn´s great strengths and specialties: to take unusual themes and ideas and include them so well into his compositions that they actually appear like a completely natural part of it.

Hope to see you at Past Meets Present!
David Danzmayr