1) Title of the CD – Soul of the Tengo

2) Composer/s – Astor Piazzolla, Jorge Calandrelli

3) Performing artist/s – Yo-Yo Ma Cello, Sergio & Odair Assad Guitars, Kathryn Stott Piano, Nestor Marconi Bandoncón, Antonio Agri Violin, Edwin Barker Bass

4) Briefly discuss one major work on the CD and give your opinion of the work and the performance thereof on this particular CD

Piazzolla represents musics in Argentina, and he was from Argentina that’s why all of his pieces were in Spanish, for example the one I am going to briefly describe, La Grand Tengo. It means ‘The Grand Tengo’. Astor Piazzolla isn’t just a composer; he’s also a pianist, leader and an arranger. In 1940, he composed a piece for Arthur Rubinstein. And Rubinstein found out that Piazzolla has talent on composing. Therefore, he recommended Piazzolla to take lessons in composing with Alberto Ginastea.

The piece, La Grand Tengo, it starts with a risoluto and appoggiatura in a low pitch. This piece is played with piano as the base, and cello has the melody. This eleven minutes long piece sounded quite hard to play, it has some sliding notes, where you have to slide your finger from one note to another note and have to show the sound effect of the sliding sound. Other than that you have to play the notes with froza, by using a lot of force on the bow. In additional, some notes are played with staccato, short and quick.

During the part where the cello plays the long note, the cello plays with a lot of vibrato to make it sound smooth and ruhig. At that part, the cello also plays with a lot of crescendos and decrescendos to make the music sound interesting and musical.

This piece’s ending is loud and the piano plays on the beat just like a drum, while the cello plays off the beat, just alternating the melody, making it sound like an echo.