JosĂŠ Serebrier
Tango in Blue (Tango en Azul) for saxophone quartet
While on a tour in Germany with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, I was asked to do an unusual program featuring Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony preceded by tangos by Kurt Weill, Stravinsky and Piazzolla. In view of the enthusiastic audience reaction, it was proposed that we make a recording of tangos by these and other composers. We proceeded to put together a mixed bag, from Weill’s German and French periods, to Stravinsky's peculiar take on the form, Satie's minimalist 'perpetual' tango, and Gade's flamboyant, popular Tango Jalousie. Piazzolla could not be left out. The resulting recording “Tango in Blue” is on BIS CD 1175. My own contributions to the genre were conceived before the recording was planned. Tango in Blue (Tango en Azul) was written during a long overnight flight from New York to Montevideo, as an impromptu gift for the National Orchestra of Uruguay (Orquesta Sinfónica del SODRE), which had invited me to conduct its 75th anniversary concert. The first four notes are a direct quote from the final four notes of my Partita, Symphony No.2, one of the few compositions (written soon after my arrival in the United States) that used Latin American rhythms and melodic turns almost as if I was saying that there's where I left off writing 'tonal' music, and I am back. After Montevideo, we played it in Lima and later on in Buenos Aires and many other cities in Latin America on tour with the National Chamber Orchestra of Toulouse. At my publishers' request, I wrote several versions, for violin and piano, trio, string quartet, string orchestra, saxophone quartet, and others. Casi un Tango (Almost a Tango) is an entirely different piece, nostalgic and more “classical.” No longer having the 4/4 beat as a basis, it is a much more rhapsodic piece, salon music in a simple a-b-a form. The relation to the popular concept of tango is in the spirit and character of the music. While Casi un Tango was conceived as a work for English Horn and strings it works perfectly well with other solo instruments. Alternate solo parts are provided for flute, oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon, French Horn, and Trumpet. In Tango perpétuel, I have attempted an orchestral version of Erik Satie’s solo piano work, No. 17 of Sports et divertissements (1914). As with a number of Satie’s pieces, the pianist is asked to repeat the few bars over and over. My version, a mere 4 minutes in duration, involves subtle changes in orchestration at each repeat. —José Serebrier
Tango in Blue (Tango en Azul) José Serebrier (2001)
Tempo di Tango
Soprano Saxophone
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Alto Saxophone
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Tenor Saxophone
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