Argentine-Australian pianist Marcela Fiorillo… opening Nuevo Tango to a different generation. Photo by William Hall
Argentine-Australian pianist Marcela Fiorillo, a noted exponent of Piazzolla’s music, is now based in Canberra. Before taking off on a regional tour to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, and a more extensive tour to Argentina, she will give a recital in which she traces the nature of the Nuevo Tango style he pioneered.
Trained in his native Argentina and France, Piazzolla returned to his home country to revolutionise the tango world, abandoning the rose-between-the-teeth, underworld nightclub format for the concert platform and bringing into tango elements of jazz, classical string music to create the so-called Nuevo Tango that is now known the world over.
“His passionate music takes us to places surrounded by the sound and images of Buenos Aires,” Fiorillo says.
Fiorillo has secured engagements at the UITM University Conservatory, just outside Kuala Lumpur, and in the Bangkok Cultural Centre, where she will perform in late October, also taking masterclasses and lecturing on what makes Piazzolla’s Nuevo Tango music so distinctive.
Significantly, she has secured sponsorship from the Argentine embassies in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
“It is all aimed at people who don’t know his music,” Fiorillo tells “CityNews”.
She hopes to open the music up to a different generation and to the international music public. No wonder the ambassadors are so keen – for many people around the world, tango equals Argentina.
In the opening part of the program, Fiorillo performs the works “Milonga del Angel” and “Muerte del Angel”, written for a play in which an angel descends to the non-angelic streets of Buenos Aires only to meet his death in a street fight.
She will follow with the autumn and winter movements from Piazzolla’s own “Four Seasons”, the work that put him on the classical map, and another celebrated work written at the time of his father’s death, “Parafrasis sobre Adios Nonino”.
The second part of this sophisticated program ranges from the minimalist “Oblivion” to the almost racy “Buenos Aires, Zero Hour”, concluding with his mighty work “Tangata”, (tango-toccata) which owes something to Bach, jazz, classical and tango.
Fiorillo’s lecture, also to be heard in Canberra on October 1, traces the evolution of tango music, touching on Piazzolla’s struggles with his personal angels and demons to find the compositional language that made him famous.
Marcela Fiorillo lecture “Piazzolla and the New Tango”, ANU Manning Clark Theatre 2, 7pm, Thursday, October 1, free event.
“Piazzolla Tango” concert, Larry Sitsky Recital Room, ANU School of Music, Thursday, October 8. Bookings via iwannaticket.com.au or at the door.
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