Piazzolla: 4 Seasons Of Buenos Aires – Xavier Phillips

Recognisable throughout the world and marked by an unmistakable authenticity, Astor Piazzolla’s musical language has achieved a truly universal resonance. Following on from Carlos Gardel, the Argentine bandoneonist and composer reinvented the tango in the 1950s, giving it a new aesthetic identity. Such was its force that it ultimately moved beyond the dance itself and became the foundation of all Piazzola’s musical creation. His style requires a kind of initiation: it is shaped by an improbable meeting between European art music and a popular art born in the barrios of Buenos Aires. By embracing it, Xavier Phillips and Les Solistes de Lausanne are cultivating a passionate relationship with this music, which breathes the soul of that city, poised between melancholy and exaltation.