Le Grand Tango
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1982
- Duration
- 10'
- Publisher
- Edizioni Bèrben
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About this piece
Astor Piazzolla wrote Le Grand Tango for cello and piano in 1982, commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich. According to Maria Susana Azzi's biography Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla, Rostropovich did not take the piece up for eight years. In April 1990 he rehearsed it with Piazzolla at the Teatro Colón (with pianist Susana Mendelievich), then gave the world premiere in New Orleans on 24 April 1990 with pianist Sara Wolfensohn, repeating it three days later at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. Azzi describes a ternary-form work full of "strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity," with "fierce cello scrapes at the beginning" and a reflective middle section built on "the cello's snaking melodic line." Rostropovich recorded it with Igor Uriash in St Petersburg in 1996, and Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott recorded it on Soul of the Tango (Sony, 1997). The cello-and-piano edition is published by Edizioni Bèrben (E. 2386 B.), which also publishes many arrangements.
Technical overview
A single movement of roughly 10–12 minutes in three parts (fast – slow – fast). It calls for percussive, accented tango rhythms in 8/8 groupings (3+3+3+3+2+2), scraping and percussive effects, glissandi and pizzicato, a long expressive cantabile in the middle, and a technically demanding, very fast final section.