The Four Seasons

Description

This is Eduardo Isaac’s fourth album recorded in 1996. It features Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons adapted for solo guitar by Sérgio Assad. These pieces particularly called the attention of a music critic who declared ecstatically after hearing the album « Finally, to be able to hear the music of the Argentinian master ideally interpreted. Piazzolla’s Cuatro estaciones porteñas, he said, is not the original version for quintet, but the artistry of Eduardo Isaac gives the appearance of a chamber ensemble, with round and full basses, chords arching from pleasure and trebles shivering with delight » (Diapason).
This recording reinforces Eduardo’s passion for this music and directs him with determination towards a new Piazzolla experience. He adapts and records eight tableaux of Maria de Buenos de Buenos Aires (GHA 126.051) of which « he extracts the quintessence of the opera and interprets with rare profundity of sound and exquisite sense of colors » (Le Monde de la Musique). This album received the CHOC de la Musique award and was declared to be « perfectly recorded »…

After hearing his fellow countryman Roberto Aussel playing Walton’s Five Bagatelles, Astor Piazzolla writes for him the Cinco Piezas (Campero, Romantico*, Acentuado*, Triston and Compadre). A few years later, Piazzolla composes for the Assad Brothers the now famous Tango Suite in three movements – its first performance taking place in 1985 in the presence of Piazzolla himself. He also writes L’Histoire du Tango for guitar and flute or violin**, retracing through its four contrasted movements the evolution of the tango from its popular origins (1900) to the “concert tango” of the late 20th century (an evolution extremely similar to that of the guitar which won its place in the concert halls), and a concerto for the guitar and bandoneon in three movements — Introduction, Milonga and Tango — recorded by Eduardo Isaac and Marcelo Nisinman on GHA 126.046. In 1968, Piazzolla composes for his quintet (bandoneon, violin, electric guitar, bass and piano) Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, but the four pieces are rarely played like a cycle in concert, and never recorded together. They present all the basic ingredients of Piazzolla’s “tango nuevo”, chromatism, dissonance, strong rhythmic structure, tempo variations, dramatic accents and intense atmosphere. In 1992, at the suggestion of David Tannenbaum, the Augustine Foundation commissions a transcription for guitar of Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas to Sérgio Assad. Due to his deep understanding of Piazzolla’s music and to his exceptional complicity with his instrument, Sérgio Assad soon after sends the four pieces to New York. They would be published one by one in the year 1995 in the four issues of the Guitar Review. This version for solo guitar is a delicious compromise between the tango burning under Piazzolla Quinteto’s fingers and the intimate and warm world of the guitar.
* Recorded by Eduardo Isaac on GHA 126.008 ** Recorded by Odair Assad and Fernando Suarez Paz on GHA 126.027
“I wrote the Libra Sonatina just after an important heart operation that took place on April 2nd 1982, and I dedicated it to Jean-Yves Neveux, my surgeon and friend. The piece was originally written for guitar, percussion instruments, and double-bass, however, it is published and known today as a solo guitar piece. The chaotic rhythms and the uneven measures often with the added value of India (droit dans le texte !) reflect the period before my operation. The title of the first movement is inspired by Satyajit Ray’s movie Le salon de musique. The rhythms characteristic of North India, omnipresent during this masterpiece of the cinema, naturally revealed to me a similarity to the beats of a sick heart. In the second movement, Largo, time stopped. It is the moment of intervention, everything is calm, reserved, almost serene. However, an evident tension prevails, a considerable weight, each movement is important. Fuoco is the life returning after the success of the operation. It is the fire of life triumphing over all. The “pizzicati Bartok” punctuate frantically the final, sweeping away of everything.”

Roland Dyens

Age 43, Manuel Ponce enters the class of Paul Dukas at “L’Ecole Normale de Paris”. There he befriends Joaquin Rodrigo and Heitor Villa Lobos, both pupils in the same class of composition. In 1932, when Ponce leaves the school, Dukas says: “the compositions of Ponce bear the stamp of the most distinguished talent and it has been long since one has not classified them in the scholar category. I feel hesitant in granting him a qualification, even the highest, to express my satisfaction in having a pupil so gifted and so personal”. Manuel Ponce writes his first piece for guitar — the Sonata Mexicana — in 1923, the year of Segovia’s first recital in Mexico. From this time forward, Ponce continues to compose for the guitar sending his music to Segovia. The guitarist plays the pieces in his recitals as soon as they are ready. On July 20th 1928, Segovia writes to Ponce: “I am revising all your compositions. The Sonata III is ready. I have accepted the final part of the first movement as the other has not arrived and because I fell in love with it. The whole sonata is very beautiful and is a work of consideration for the guitar, the artist, and the public. Again, I want to thank you wholeheartedly”. “Late one Night was written at the time of my life, my late twenties, when I would compose music between the hours of midnight and five or six in the morning. I loved the quiet and calm that fell over New York during this time and it made me want to play the guitar and compose. I was quite infatuated with jazz harmonies and rhythms, and Late one Night is really a jazz ballad with a more classical introduction. While I live a very different lifestyle now, I look back at the period through the filter of time, with great fondness and nostalgia”.

Frederic Hand