Sergei Gudelev and the flautist Vasiliy Romanov play Night Club 1960, the third movement of Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango. The recording was made for our Siccas Media programme.
About Histoire du Tango
Piazzolla wrote Histoire du Tango in 1986 for flute and guitar, and built it as a history lesson in four movements. Bordel 1900 opens in the brothels where the tango began. Café 1930 moves it into the cafés, where people had started listening rather than dancing. Night Club 1960 arrives at the moment the tango met bossa nova and jazz, and Concert d'aujourd'hui ends in the concert hall.
Night Club 1960 is the movement most often taken out of the set, and it is easy to hear why. The rhythm has the drive of a dance, the harmony has the colour of a jazz standard, and the writing gives the flute long singing lines over a guitar part that has to be accompaniment, bass and percussion at once. The piece sounds free; it is not. Every rubato has to be agreed between two players who cannot see the same page.
For the guitarist the movement poses a problem of role. In a duo with a wind instrument the guitar is always at a disadvantage in sustain, and the writing does nothing to protect it: the flute can hold a note indefinitely while the guitar has to suggest that it is doing the same. The answer is not more volume but better timing — placing the bass so that the harmony arrives exactly when the line needs it.
About Astor Piazzolla
Piazzolla spent his life being told that what he wrote was not tango. He had studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, played bandoneón in Buenos Aires dance orchestras, and built from both a music that borrowed counterpoint from one world and rhythm from the other. Guitarists came to his work late, and now play it constantly. Our portrait of Astor Piazzolla follows that career, and our Piazzolla repertoire guide collects the pieces most often played on guitar.
The Guitar
Gudelev plays an instrument by Vladimir Druzhinin, a maker whose guitars are built for exactly this kind of chamber music: enough projection to hold its own against a flute, and enough definition in the bass to carry a rhythmic figure without turning muddy. Our portrait of Vladimir Druzhinin introduces his work, and you can see the available instruments in our Druzhinin collection.
Watch the Performance
Browse the repertoire in our overview of famous classical guitar pieces, or meet more players in our list of great classical guitarists.
