Piazzolla/ Isabelle Van Keulen Ensemble - Angeles & Diablos

The angel as a symbol of the tango-dance, death, and resurrection. Without losing the romance, the violence, eroticism and devotion of the traditional tango that he saw as empty and hollowed out, Piazzolla renewed and modified it with elements of European art music, Argentine folklore and jazz, and thus tango took on a new meaning and shape. The writer Alberto Rodriguez Munoz approached Piazzolla in 1961 with a request to write music for his play Tango del angel, which is about an angel appearing in an apartment block in Buenos Aires to cleanse the souls of it's inhabitants. The titles Introduccion al angel, Milonga del angel, and Muerte del angel were created. The latter, a four-part fugue with hard, uncompromising harmonies and rhythms, impressively shows how far Piazzolla pushed the boundaries of traditional tango. When they play was performed in 1962, even the previously hostile parts of ht emusical public in Argentina had to admit how fitting and successful this music was and the titles, especially Milonga del angel, gained extraordinary popularity. The motives of Angel and Diablo appear in many of the tangos composed by Astor Piazzolla: "In my story, angels and devils mix- you have to have something in everything."