It’s not only Vivaldi who composed music for the 4 seasons in the year; other composers did The same thing. Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla applied the same idea to Buenos Aires in a set of tangos, called the Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, The adjective “Porteñas” refers to Buenos Aires, hence the English title of The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.
Piazzolla’s set of four tunes evoking each time of year, composed in the late 1960s for his quintet of piano, bandoneón, violin, electric guitar, and bass (he often used one of the movements to open his concerts).
Piazzolla’s Four Seasons are a series of single tango movements with several references to Vivaldi’s famous work, were not originally conceived as a suite. First, he composed Verano Porteño (Summer movement) in 1965 as incidental music for the play Melenita de Oro by Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz. Piazzolla also immediately created an arrangement of the piece for Aníbal Troilo traditional tango orchestra that was recorded in 1967. Otoño (Autumn) was written in 1969, and Primavera and Invierno (Spring and Winter) in 1970.
Through four orchestral works, Piazzolla’s tango compositions depict the opposite seasons and moods of Buenos Aires, the big city on the banks of the Río de la Plata, where this music originated.
It has been said that you can see Buenos Aires while listening to Astor Piazzolla’s music. When you listen to Piazzolla’s Four Season work, You can feel Argentinean warmth, passion and temperament meet surroundings with lower temperatures.
Listen to Piazzolla’s four season full arranged for piano trio by José Bragato.
(Artiom Shishkov, violin | Dima Tsypkin, cello | Sergey Smirnov, piano)
Piazzolla four seasons of Buenos Aires movements:
1. «Primavera Porteño» (spring)…. 0:00
2. «Verano Porteño» (summer)… 4:43
3. «Otoño Porteño» (autumn)…. 11:39
4. «Invierno Porteño» (winter)… 17:33
Also listen: Violinist Mari Samuelsen with cellist Håkon Samuelsen are performing “Invierno porteno” (Winter in buenos Aires )
Also listen: Verano Porteñ (summer) peformed by Soloist violin: Soyoung Yoon
Who is Astor Piazzolla?
Latin American music was not really considered before Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (1921- 1992), who was the first composer that incorporated improvisation in tango, but his music is different than jazz, he only took the idea of improvisation when he lived in New York from 1924 to 1937 and applied it to his music.
Piazzolla was regarded as tango’s savior, the signature dance of his native country, Argentina. He was also a bandoneón player, studied with the great 20th century classical figures Alberto Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger, joined the popular tango orchestra of Anibal Troilo before started to compose own music and made a revolution with the tango. Thanks to him, classical music for Argentina was known in the world. However, traditional tango lovers resented him a lot. Even today they consider it not tango.
If you like this piece you may also want to find out more about Piazzolla’s best tango works libertango and Oblivion