In his masterwork María de Buenos Aires, Astor Piazzolla both justifies his own tango nuevo (new tango) concept and personifies the tango itself. For the composer, it was a remarkable accomplishment that demonstrated to any fair-minded listener the validity of his entire approach to Argentine tango. Astor Piazzolla (1921 - 1992) was a child prodigy on the bandoneón, one of the instruments of the classic tango ensemble. He studied academic classical subjects and composed a symphony, which earned him a scholarship to study in Paris. There, his teacher Nadia Boulanger advised Piazzolla that his true voice was in the tango. Piazzolla believed that the tango had become formula-bound and stagnant. His additions of ideas from academic forms (including fugue) and modern harmonies outraged traditional tanguistos (tango players) and their fans. Some younger people adopted Piazzolla as an idol. One early fan was the Uraguayan Horacio Ferrer. In 1948, when Ferrer was 14 and Piazzolla was still in his mid-twenties, Ferrer introduced himself as a young poet and later stayed in contact with Piazzolla. After Ferrer's first volume of poetry appeared in 1967, Piazzolla told him, as Ferrer recounts it in record release notes, "You are doing in your poetry what I am doing in my music." Piazzolla invited Ferrer to plan a "subject for the musical and lyric stage." Two months later, Ferrer presented Piazzolla with the libretto of María de Buenos Aires and suggested Piazzolla use tango styles from every period of the genre, as well as its predecessor the milonga, more rural Argentine styles, and some other rhythms such as the waltz and the march. María de Buenos Aires is a metaphor for the tango. A figure called el Duende (the Goblin) narrates her mysterious origins in the region of the Rio de la Plata. She speaks the language of the tango and is loved and hated in equal measure: loved for her beauty and reviled for living in the slums and brothels. The crime leaders of the city condemn her to death, but allow her shadow to continue to walk the streets of Buenos Aires. The Goblin, in love with María, calls her back to be re-born. A new version of María, a New Tango, comes into existence, full of promise as an open-ended question. The music is a dazzling series of dances and songs of great variety, all enlivened by Piazzolla's powerful modern harmonies. It was highly successful; it premiered at the Sala Planeta in Buenos Aires on May 8, 1968, and ran 120 performances. Its LP release was a worldwide success and remains available. The original orchestration, by Piazzolla himself, was for 11 players. In 1998, Leonid Desyatnikov, at the request of violinist Gidon Kremer, made a new arrangement for eight players, eliminating some aspects of the original scoring that were either at the time or later became commercial music-scoring clichés. This version has an appropriate rawness and grittiness of sound that gives María a power and timelessness like that of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera.

© All Music Guide

Fuga y misterio, tango (from operetta, María de Buenos Aires)

This instrumental piece constitutes the fifth scene of Piazzolla's tango-chamber opera María de Buenos Aires, in which the heroine leaves the suburbs and wanders through the heart of Buenos Aires. In the arrangement most commonly encountered today, the fugue begins with an agitated bandoneón solo that jitters around the scale and then is echoed in turn by the other instruments of the chamber ensemble. After about a minute and a half of fugal writing, a full-fledged tango takes over, swift and gritty. Suddenly everything comes to a halt, and the "mystery" section begins with a slow, lyrical melody related to Maria's main theme; this music gradually vaporizes.

© James Reel, Rovi