Originally written for his quintet—violin, piano, electric guitar, double bass, and bandoneón—Astor Piazzolla’s riff on Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is a provocative example of Piazzolla’s “New Tango” style. New Tango was Piazzolla’s controversial innovation that became his signature in the musical world. As a teen, Piazzolla studied composition with fellow Argentinian, Alberto Ginastera. Ginastera saw much promise in Piazzolla and encouraged him to follow composition further. Piazzolla traveled to Paris and studied counterpoint and harmony with Nadia Boulanger. He’d written many “classically correct” works, until Boulanger heard his Argentinean roots in tango. “There is Piazzolla!” she exclaimed, and the younger composer was emboldened. From then on, Piazzolla aimed to imbibe traditional Argentinian tango elements with harmonies, counterpoint, and rhythmic complexities he learned while studying orchestral music in Paris. 

Piazzolla composed his Seasons in 1965 and 1969, not particularly intending them to be performed as a large-form concerto like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In 1999, Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov arranged Piazzolla’s handiwork and fit the mixed-ensemble tangos into Vivaldi’s Baroque complement. 

Although Vivaldi’s seasons appear chronologically to the calendar year, Piazzolla’s were written quite “out of order” and in different years altogether. Desyatnikov orders the movements of his arrangement opposite Vivaldi’s in homage to Argentina; here, seasons occur “in reverse” due to their Southern hemisphere locale. Desyatnikov cleverly completes his arrangement with multiple quotes from the Baroque master’s original work, going so far as to set opposite seasons within one another—Vivaldi’s Winter is quoted in Piazzolla/Desyatnikov’s Summer, further illustrating the climate discord. 

Each of Piazzolla’s Seasons grooves, dances, and entices the listener. Walking bass lines and col legno passages provide a percussive backbone so that tutti strings may promenade and paso with expert rhythmic precision. Autumn includes an extended cello solo that is both expressive and languid; a perfect response to the furiously energetic violin solo. The cello solo, almost suspended in time, fuses into another entrance of the tutti strings but is abruptly taken out of the moment by a burst of solo violin playing. The stratospheric violin cadenza that follows brilliantly showcases the technical demands of the performer as well as the dynamic musicality that saturates Piazzolla’s music. In Winter, the principal cello is again highlighted, this time as an elegant, romantic partner for the solo violin—after all, it takes two to tango.

With a plodding finish and dusted with a final Vivaldi quote, the Baroque concerto is completely re-dressed, nearly three centuries later, to celebrate the vivid tradition of tango in Buenos Aires.