Search - et al Astor Piazzolla (Composer) :: Piazzolla: Tangos arranged for saxophone and orchestra

Federico Mondelci and the strings of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra have collectively caught the tango bug and dedicated an entire program to Piazzolla here. Suddenly strings and saxophone alike have become inflamed with a new and beautiful fever that manifests itself in shivers, secrets, palpitations, flowing silences, triumphs and tears that crackle beneath the music's dark surface, merging in an elegant and intense unity like the balance of reason and passion. Mondelci has reworked Piazzolla's music with originality and fantasy, clothing it in the same instinctive elegance with which the muted yet penetrating tone of his saxophone recalls the bandoneon's haughty languors. With deft affection, Mondelci's devotion, professionalism, and sheer love of his instrument share the same intuition that tormented and motivated the young Piazzolla: the need to completely rethink -- but always with respect and admiration -- a music that already existed, and to reweave its thematic material according to his own sensibilities and creative imperatives.Mondelci has succeeded magnificently in blending intimacy and distance, plenitude and emptiness, bombast and lyricism, and he has done so with arranging so intelligent as to be imperceptible.From the overflowing vessel of melodies written and recorded by Piazzolla for various ensembles and purposes, Mondelci, in this anthology-like sequence, has accomplished a new and sophisticated interweaving of orchestra and soloist, where profane angels, loosed from their urban shackles, are free to sing of their ardent dreams of a most human resurrection.