 Pour le plus grand nombre, le nom d’Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) rime avec tango. Le musicien a en effet laissé à la postérité quelques-unes des plus belles partitions de ce genre apparu à la fin du XIXe siècle en Argentine. À l'occasion du centenaire de sa naissance, le compositeur est mis à l’honneur au piano : Jeroen van Veen, familier des studios d’enregistrement pour Brilliant Classics, a opté pour une sélection d’œuvres réunies en un double-album. L’auditeur y retrouvera les mélodies les plus célèbres, à commencer par Ángel (1962-1965), Libertango (1974) et Oblivion (1982). La Suite para piano op. 2 (1943), moins connue, rappelle les liens entre Piazzolla et Ginastera : le premier fut, sur les conseils du pianiste Arthur Rubinstein, l’élève du second. La mélancolie et la nostalgie qui irriguent l’œuvre de Piazzolla sont ici restituées avec subtilité (écoutez le déchirant A Don Nicanor Paredes, 1965), sans que soit pour autant négligée l’ivresse rythmique et sonore (Street Tango, 1988), ni que la réduction des œuvres au seul piano minore la qualité d’écriture (Estaciones, 1965-1970). Quel bel hommage à Piazzolla ! (Eric Gennari) I play with violence,’ Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) told one interviewer. ‘My bandoneon must sing and scream – I can’t conceive of pastel tones in tango.’ With an unrivalled discography of minimalist classics to his credit, from Satie to Glass to Yann Tiersen, Jeroen van Veen is ideally placed to return the raw passion and punchy rhythms that belong to the music of Piazzolla in any context. Jeroen Van Veen’s selection runs the gamut of Piazzolla’s expressive vocabulary, from the tenderly intimate title track and the Impressionist brushstrokes of Oblivion to the tough and defiant Libertango which concludes the album in truly anthemic fashion. CD2 begins with another masterpiece of street music, Adiós Nonino. A string of other masterpieces follow, making their effect as surely on the piano as they do on the guitar or Piazzolla’s own instrument, the bandoneon. There is the simple, sweet sentiment of Ausencias, the flamboyant Street Tango and a collection of six contrasting tangos from 1974, from the dark and swirling Meditango to the grave resignation of Tristango. Marking the centenary of Piazzolla’s birth in 1921, this new album pays devoted homage to a composer who came to craft one of the defining sounds of the late 20th-century, when tango left the barrios and clubs of Buenos Aires and then the dance clubs of America and Europe to find a home in recital and concert halls worldwide. As ‘the leading exponent of minimalism today’ (Fanfare), Jeroen Van Veen’s playing will speak to an audience which has never danced a tango in its life but thrills to the undertow of melancholy and dazzling flair that characterises great tango interpreters past and present. ‘From the first time I heard his music, I felt attracted to it,’ says the pianist in his booklet essay. ‘The rhythm, the melodic value, the atmosphere, it is hard to describe but it felt like a natural attraction. The kind of feeling that the music is part of your music memory; it was already there.’
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