Piazzolla's late pieces for orchestra, lacking both intimacy and Piazzolla's own playing of the bandoneón, miss the full flavor of the composer's grittier small-group jazz-tangos. Yet Tangazo, for full orchestra, does convey some of Piazzolla's dark vision of the tango. This extended piece opens with a meandering lament in the low strings, with frequent glissandi giving the line an erotic menace. As the theme is picked up and elaborated by the higher strings, it begins to sound like a cross between Bartók and Villa-Lobos. The second section brings in winds and percussion, including the piano. This material is far perkier, with Piazzolla's trademark string scrapes and glissandi giving the dance an air of danger. Piazzolla turns up the heat by bringing in the rest of the orchestra, but this climax soon recedes into solo woodwind treatments of the dance theme. The third section opens with a spare, spacious theme tapped out by piano and percussion, then taken up broadly by solo horn, with the strings subtly marking the tango rhythm before appropriating the melody for themselves. Eventually the solo oboe and clarinet take their plaintive turns with the melody, before the horn restates it one more time. Then the perky woodwind material returns, this time with ominous scraping and shaking from the percussion, and particularly dirty glisses from the violins. The entire orchestra takes it up, marking the syncopated beat with increasing vigor. The tune is ultimately transformed into a brief march that recedes gradually, capped incongruously by two little wind chords.



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