The morbid beauty of the tango

The woman returns with fans, particularly when it comes down to appearing at a tango evening in proper style, and especially if we are talking about a concertante tango, like Friday at the Heilbronner Zigarre. An hour long, the Cuarteto Rotterdam played all types of tango from different musical eras of this Argentinean export hit – pure listening pleasure.
The music could be a little more formal if there is no one dancing than when it is played for dancing purposes. The musicians must put much more feeling into their music to entice others to dance. This is an area that the students of the Rotterdam Academy for World Music understand particularly well.
They present their tango to the whole world with pieces from Eduardo Lettera to Astor Piazzolla. People coincidentally meet each other somewhere in Buenos Aires in a tango club and they possibly chat with each other. It remains to be seen whether they will bring the tango together for this night. The four of them play the tango, providing feelings of morbid fragility to a perpetual state of limbo between happiness, suspense and deep melancholy. You never know what type of feeling the music will evoke from one second to the next.
Judy Ruks (piano), Frances Dorling (double bass), Michael Dolak (bandoneon) and Susanne Cordula Welsch (violin) are powerfully building the ambience with a wealth of ideas among an audience of people who are no longer stays in their seats after the break. The time is now; the air is warm; couples have found each other and tango the night away.

Martin Nied
Heilbronner Stimme, 24.07.2006

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