Though Astor Piazzolla was an only child and born in Argentina, both his parents were Italian from Italy. Furthermore, they had relocated to New York's Greenwich Village by the time the boy was four and there he remained until he was 15. Nonino, his dad, bought Astor a bandoneon, which is similar to an accordion, in a pawn shop. The boy was soon playing so well that he was invited to tour the States with a band. His father refused permission because Astor was too young which, under the circumstances, was a blessing, as the plane crashed killing all on board. When Piazzolla was 17 he moved to Buenos Aires. There he met the famous pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who introduced the gifted boy to Alberto Ginastera. Ginastera, the leading Argentinian classical composer, taught Astor orchestration.

While making a good living playing the bandoneon in dance bands, he was studying the piano and the music of composers such as Ravel and Stravinsky. Piazzolla was 32 when he won the Fabian Sevitzky Award, which enabled him to study with conductor/influential teacher Nadia Boulanger in France. She asked him to play some of his own compositions. One was a tango. "That's it," she said. "You should devote your life to developing the tango." He took her advice. Today's performance celebrates the centenary of his birth. The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires was originally conceived as several disparate works for a combination of instruments including an electric guitar and a bandoneon. Some years after Piazzolla died, the Russian composer Desyatnikov not only re-scored the work for solo violin and strings, but he also added more obvious references to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as well as dividing the suite into four three-movement concerti.

Siwoo Kim, who has delighted us in the past with his January 2020 performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto), is tonight's soloist. He performs on a 1753 “ex-Birgkit” Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin.

Program notes by A. Ian Fraser