Astor Piazzolla (born in 1921 in Mar del Plata, died in 1992 in Buenos Aires, Argentina), the only child of Italian immigrants, spent most of his childhood with his family in New York City where his musical world took shape around nostalgic Gardel’s tangos at home and jazz outside of it. For his ninth birthday he got a bandoneon (a small, square concertina or accordion with buttons instead of a keyboard) and quickly rose to a status of child prodigy, having written his first tango, La Catigna, in 1932. A year later he began his formal music studies with Hungarian pianist Bela Wilda. Upon return to Argentina in 1937, in parallel with playing as bandoneonist, he continued studies of piano and harmony with Alberto Ginastera. As a youthful composer, he abandoned tango and began to write music as a modernist classical composer, inspired by the scores of Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel and others. Success was slow to come, until after the 1950s and his studies of composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Encouraged by her, he understood that his path is in evolved new tango, and his mission was to take it out from the bordellos and dance halls into the concert halls. Piazzolla’s new tango differed from the traditional in its use of elements of jazz, of extended harmonies and dissonance, its use of counterpoint, and its incorporation into extended compositional forms. In addition, he introduced non-traditional instruments in tango such as flute and saxophone. Despite the discontent of traditional tango players, Piazzolla never looked back and continued to champion the ‘tango nuevo’ with his ensembles, gaining international acknowledgment, composing, performing and recording incessantly until his death. It is estimated that he wrote about 3,000 pieces and recorded about 500, and many of his song-compositions are well known by the general public (e.g. Adiós Nonino).

Bordel 1900 and Café 1930 are the first two movements of the four-movement suite Histoire du Tango composed in 1986. Piazzolla depicts the history of tango through the twentieth century in historical order, starting with its original low setting. In Bordel 1900, the first four notes played by the flute evoke the police whistle, announcing the evacuation of the brothel and continuing in energetic rhythm and high spirits, but not without the grace of an earlier popular dance, the milonga. Solo flute passages offer rubato tempo and provocative, almost erotic, melodies. While exploring chordal progressions, Piazzolla remains true to his roots with the use of off-beat syncopation, elegantly applied, underlining the daring, flirtatious and sensual nature of this piece. By the time of Café 1930, tango has transformed into slower music with melancholic harmonies. The emphasis on the dance decreased, and attention shifted to listening to music. Tango is now romantic, sombre, and lyrical. Proposing many ad libitum sections, Piazzolla generously allows performers the freedom of changing the tempo and putting their own soul into interpretation.