Maria de Buenos Aires is victim, lover, heroine and femme fatale, a powerful illusion given substance and pathos by the approachable surrealism of the opera’s librettist, Horacio Ferrer. Piazzolla’s music harbours a Weill-like sense of foreboding; minor-key heartache invades almost everywhere, even when the dancing starts, the air thickens and the drink starts to flow. If you want to sample prior to purchasing, then try disc 1, track 4, “I am Maria”, potentially the set’s hit number; the saucy “Fugue and Mystery” (track 6 – an ‘instrumental’ where Maria walks the city streets), the aromatic “Waltz-poem” (track 7) or the gorgeous, rambling bandoneon solo that opens the next track but which soon gives way to a rhythmically ferocious but heavily sentimental “Accusation Toccata”.
Maria is a textile-worker whose spirit is conjured from an asphalt-covered grave for various fresh encounters – not least with a gaggle of psychoanalysts who, in real life (Argentina around 1960) helped cope with a national neurosis caused by severe economic problems. Piazzolla’s madcap “Aria of the Analysts” (disc 2, track 4) recalls Bernstein’s “Gee, Officer Krupky” from West Side Story, but elsewhere the musical style has that air of ineffable sadness, melancholy and ‘tragedy bravely borne’ that is so typical of Piazzolla’s music in general. Then again, Maria de Buenos Aires is a “Tango Operita” and this remarkable performance keeps the dance element very much to the fore.
Leonid Desyatnikov’s arrangement takes heed of various recorded predecessors (the most famous being a two-LP release that was issued not long after the piece was completed), but centres mainly on “the graphically stark style of the Astor Quartet, a style that struck me [Desyatnikov] as the most natural one to adopt in a modern re-working of the music”.
Comparing this new recording with its only commercially available rival – by I Solisti Aquilani under Vittorio Antonellini, recorded in 1997 – highlights some significant stylistic contrasts. Antonellini opts for the original line-up of 11 musicians, whereas Desyatnikov reduces his forces to eight (violin, bandoneon, piano, double-bass, flute, viola, cello, percussion – Antonellini’s recording includes an extra violin, a guitar and an extra percussion player). Desyatnikov also adds a chorus, which works well in the “Aria of the Analysts”. Both versions do Piazzolla proud, but the new set is fresher in tone, texturally more inventive and more tellingly astringent. In my book, it is definitely the one to go for.
Antonellini’s Maria is the smoky-voiced Marina Gentile, a capable singer who is less sensually alluring than Kremer’s Julia Zenko; and although Nestor Garay’s narration is sensitive and carefully prepared, there can be no denying the more evocative, not to say more authentic, presence of Ferrer himself on the Teldec set. However, perhaps the biggest contrast of all is between the two male singers, Antonellini’s Paolo Speca suggesting a well-trained operatic baritone, and Kremer’s Jairo recalling the passionate, jazz-inflected delivery of that great tango past-master, Carlos Gardel.
And then there’s Kremer himself, agile, personable, tonally changeable, a template in sound for the tragic but elusive main protagonist, “Maria tango, slum Maria, Maria night, Maria fatal, Maria of love”. Through him, you learn to love her – before she, in turns, learns to haunt you.'