The Edición Crítica or critical edition underway from Columbia Argentina is a reissue series devoted to the presentation on CD of
Astor Piazzolla's LPs, including both the original cover material and an essay expanding upon the information contained there. These materials are in Spanish only, on a two-sided square insert that features the original LP back cover on one side, at something close to actual size. BMG is missing a chance to appeal to worldwide audiences here, for these materials are interesting enough to provide a strong purchase incentive for any serious
Piazzolla fan. The back cover of this 1963 album, Tango para una ciudad, includes a terrific quotation from
Igor Stravinsky renouncing interest in the musical past and future, and the attempt of the annotator (who is just designated La Madrid) to link
Piazzolla's experiments to contemporaneous American jazz are also worth noting. The chief attraction of the series, however, is the renewed availability of a lot of music that has until now been difficult to locate. Tango para una ciudad (Tango for a City, representing a fascinating chapter in the evolution of
Piazzolla's identification of his music with the city of Buenos Aires), unless you were lucky enough to own the original LP, has been available only on a six-CD Japanese box set. It's a terrific listen, traveling all over the stylistic map in the course of its 10 tracks. With his Quinteto "Tango Nuevo," the primary vehicle for his music in the 1960s,
Piazzolla offers several classics here. The relatively sparse version of Buenos Aires Hora Cero (Buenos Aires at Midnight) here is haunting. And there's no reason that the title track, very much in
Piazzolla's progressive mode, shouldn't be as well known as other pieces of its kind; it's a vigorous, spikily dissonant piece, again nicely shaped by the heavily percussive quality of the quintet (electric guitar, piano, violin, and bass along with
Piazzolla's bandoneón). Other works are in entirely different styles. There are three songs featuring vocalist Hector de Rosas; they are in a more conservative vein than the instrumental tangos, like most of
Piazzolla's vocal music until he encountered a similarly adventurous collaborator in Uruguayan poet Horácio Ferrer. But even at this stage he was seeking out innovators like free-verse specialist brothers Homero and Virgilio Expósito (Maquillaje, track 9). El mundo de los dos (track 7), with words by Albino A. Gómez, by contrast, is
Piazzolla in a pure romantic pop mode, but check out the space-age bachelor-pop vocal effects! The instrumental tracks, too, are varied; Revirado, track 6, is a lighthearted Brazilian-flavored number, with a sort of gypsy contrasting strain and some wild guitar effects, a curious sort of 1960s period piece. Highly recommended for
Piazzolla fans, and strongly suggested for release in other markets; it wouldn't represent much of an investment for BMG to retain the graphics used for this release, but simply translate the texts.