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Review by georgeflanagin July 5, 2006 (5 of 6 found this review helpful)
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Piazzolla has become something of a celebrity composer in the past few years. Thirty years ago, I made it through two semesters of music history without hearing anything about him except for his name. This album has a good sampling of Piazzolla's small scale music, although ... only one piece on this disc was actually written for the forces that play it. If you like guitar, this will be an appealing arrangement. If you are after The Real Thing in Piazzolla, it may not.
The playing is clean. The sound is natural, to the point where it passes the LIAR test.** The recording serves the music very well. Most good hifis will produce satisfying sound when the instruments being reproduced are guitar, string quartet, and bandoneon, which is exactly what we have here. Channel Classics showed admirable restraint in keeping this recording within the bounds of good taste: you feel like you have a good seat in a small venue, not one with your left ear on the sound hole of one guitar, and your right ear on the other.
I played this album a couple of times a week when I first bought it; less so now. It is a good introduction to music from Piazzolla's part of the world in the mid-20th century. Piazzolla's music is less complex than Villa-Lobos, and more melodically memorable. In other words, much of this music is something that you find yourself able to sing along with.
At 55 minutes, the price is a little steep for the market niche served: a sampler of music by Piazzolla, arranged by the artists for performance with their chosen "two guitars, et al." format. On the other hand, because I have little acoustic guitar music in the piles, I am able to play something for guests who are curious, and who like guitar.
The best cuts are 4-6, which form the "Tango Suite for Two Guitars," and I like #7, which is "Tres Minutos con la Realidad."
** LIAR test: Coined by some audio magazine years ago, it is the Listening In Another Room test. In other words, if you hear the sound down a hallway do you feel the need to peek in the door to see if it is a live performance.
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