The American Clavé Recordings

Astor Piazzolla took tango out of the ballroom and out of Argentina. Producer and label founder Kip Hanrahan’s mid-1980s recordings for American Clavé Records took tango out of the sub-standard studio and into the top flight. It was more than timely; Piazzolla was in his 60s and would die in 1992. His nuevo tango, while often compared to jazz and modern classical music, had never been recorded with the care shown to either of those scenes. Hanrahan brought fidelity and flair, allowing the members of the quintet – especially Piazzolla on his bandoneón, Fernando Suárez Paz on violin and Pablo Ziegler on piano – to display their musical agility and their umbilical bond with each other. This box set of the three releases (also available on vinyl) comes remastered and with extensive liner notes.

Tango: Zero Hour is the best known of the trio, and contains the finest version of the stirring ‘Milonga del Ángel’ ever committed to tape. La Camorra: The Solitude of Passionate Provocation is a weightier, more meditative album; ‘Soledad’ and the three-part eponymous suite are sublime. The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado) was written for a theatrical work based on Borges’s writings and was played by a different ensemble, but it possesses that inimitable Piazzolla signature of passion and poise, conflict and control. Together, the albums constitute a landmark not only in tango but in modern music. A must-have audible triptych of Piazzolla at his zenith.