How the legendary musician Astor Piazzolla put a touch of Bach into tango
The larger-than-life Argentine, who would have turned 100 in March, brought his early training in classical music to everything he did.
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Earlier this month was the birth centenary of the larger-than-life Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player and arranger Astor Piazzolla (March 11, 1921-July 4, 1992). To mark the anniversary,
The Strad, a classical music magazine in the UK, carried a tribute article headlined “How should we interpret tango music?” that offered classically trained violinists tips on how to tackle the music genre.
The article reminded me, yet again, how much classical music had meant to Piazolla when he was growing up. In recollections of his New York childhood, that can be found on the website Todo Tango, he said: “I attended four schools until I finished grade school. They expelled me for quarrelling. But at one of them I found music: A teacher used to play records for us as examples. She made us listen to the Brahms’ third symphony, or the second movement of a symphony by Mozart. And at the next class we had to recognize each one of them.”