Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango" transcribed for piano four hands

February 4, 2011 11:18 PM

Perhaps a more unusual piano four hands piece...
posted by Blazecock Pileon (29 comments total)

Man, all these duets with palpable sexual tension are really taking over the Blue lately.

I am okay with this.
posted by NoraReed at 11:33 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

You'd palpate too if you were wearing patent leather pants.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:39 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Free the piano strings!
posted by Cranberry at 11:40 PM on February 4, 2011

Sure, the video was trying too hard in nearly every respect. But damn, that was tango transcribed for piano.
posted by arm's-length at 11:40 PM on February 4, 2011

The piano playing was rather exceptional, but I would have preferred more shots of them actually *playing* and less of them making o-faces at each other.

Oh, and Cziffra could have played both parts... by himself. You might consider it physically impossible, but I'm convinced he could have muted those strings by sheer force of talent.
posted by The Confessor at 11:42 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Christ you two. Get a room. Or maybe a suite.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:46 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

If I had several thousand dollars to devote to sheer whimsy, I would hire these people and film a video with them edited in *exactly* the same ludicrous manner... right after I organize a full circuit of revolving table-reads of Twelve Angry Men.
posted by The Confessor at 11:53 PM on February 4, 2011 [4 favorites]

The Confessor: “... right after I organize a full circuit of revolving table-reads of Twelve Angry Men.”

Do you plan to use an actual revolving table? Please tell me you do.
posted by koeselitz at 11:59 PM on February 4, 2011

Never heard of anderson & roe before. They're pretty great, no matter the film editing. (Interestingly, too, on their blog there is a recent entry about the top ten composers shtick. I remember a discussion about it somewhere here, can't find it...)
posted by Namlit at 2:58 AM on February 5, 2011

Here is another interesting four hand piano piece; n.b. it's played by two Asians.
posted by quoquo at 3:06 AM on February 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Camera work: annoying. Everything else: marvellous.
posted by Decani at 4:12 AM on February 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lovely.

I always love when our cultural obsession with constant novelty [new instruments, new technologies, new fads] gets knocked on its ass by simple ingenuity and people who look at an instrument as an amazing garden of opportunity. I'm an electronic musician, and I had a stretch where everything was feeling same-y to me, and as I was bitching about the limitations of my old sampler, my collaborator rolled his eyes and pointed out that my complaints were like grumbling that the Earth was my prison.

Well, if you put it that way.

So you get a buzz and you look for new articulations, new directions, and new ways to make sounds out of objects and instruments that we all think we fully understand. It's all about the ingenuity, and about having that relationship with an instrument.

Mind you, I'm prone to excess, so I like piano pieces played by twenty hands.
posted by sonascope at 4:32 AM on February 5, 2011 [7 favorites]

Quoquo "Here is another interesting four hand piano piece…"
- That is a really marvellous piece of music. Thank you!

Anderson & Roe duo are superb, I can't believe the level of connection. Lots of great music to start the weekend with.
posted by Surfyournut at 4:35 AM on February 5, 2011

sonascope, the Stephen Scott bowed piano stuff looks really interesting!
posted by sleevener at 7:51 AM on February 5, 2011

Love Astor Piazzola, and it's refreshing to hear him transcribed to piano that way. I agree that the video was a bit overdone, but if this and the emo cello guys bring out a new era of classical music videos, I say huzzah.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:05 AM on February 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Looking and listening through some of their other videos, the nervous camera work (post-West-Wing, third generation con caffeine) seems to be a signature feature, just as their apparent dedication to entertain/educate. Whatever you say to that; superb musicians, both of them.
posted by Namlit at 9:14 AM on February 5, 2011

I wish I had a Chinese mother...who would have insisted I not quit piano lessons.
posted by Xoebe at 9:34 AM on February 5, 2011

Piano porn.
posted by kozad at 10:53 AM on February 5, 2011

I don't like to say bad things about people who are clearly talented, and yet... The top YouTube comment claims not just that it was choreographed to look sensual, but that "it works". Um, no. No it doesn't.
posted by marmaduke_yaverland at 11:06 AM on February 5, 2011

Holy crap these two are my new favorite thing thank you Blazecock Pileon

I found it after watching Anderson play Ligeti's The Devil's Staircase etude, which is a pretty terrifying piece. And he's — how do they say? — easy on the eyes, yes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:17 AM on February 5, 2011

marmaduke, while I agree that the narrative of the video is a bit silly, that comment is correct about the "choreography" — the duo's program notes (and, I seem to recall, some other thing they wrote) talk about the deliberate overlapping of hands and arms, something you'd normally try to avoid for four-hands writing, as a way of echoing the physicality of tango.

And he's — how do they say? — easy on the eyes, yes.

Indeed.
posted by hatta at 11:22 AM on February 5, 2011

I went to piano camp (seriously) and this is exactly what it was like (not seriously).
posted by spec80 at 11:25 AM on February 5, 2011

Cziffra could have played both parts...
posted by The Confessor

Cool, more Cfrizza. Check out the Michael Jackson forehead curls.
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:37 AM on February 5, 2011

Here's a piece for piano six hands by W.F.E. Bach (grandson of J.S.).
posted by dfan at 12:08 PM on February 5, 2011

Anderson & Roe .. top of the class! Yo Yo Ma's take on Piazzolla's Libertango is differently joyful (YouTube). Tango, yey!
posted by Schroder at 12:14 PM on February 5, 2011

*mind blown*



i actually jumped off my chair and starting clapping after that finale.
this was awesome and sexy yet somewhat geeky and cheesy. very metafilter :D
posted by liza at 2:33 PM on February 5, 2011

Previously (but almost four years ago) vronsky showed us a quartet of musicians so impoverished they all had to share a cello growing up.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:51 PM on February 5, 2011

This was pretty awesome.

I always love when our cultural obsession with constant novelty [new instruments, new technologies, new fads] gets knocked on its ass by simple ingenuity and people who look at an instrument as an amazing garden of opportunity. I'm an electronic musician, and I had a stretch where everything was feeling same-y to me, and as I was bitching about the limitations of my old sampler, my collaborator rolled his eyes and pointed out that my complaints were like grumbling that the Earth was my prison.

While this is a great performance and a wonderful use of the muted-strings technique, prepared piano is definitely not new. John Cage was dicking around and putting things in in pianos decades ago. Though frankly, I found this much more enjoyable than anything Cage ever did. Wanker.
posted by spitefulcrow at 5:57 PM on February 5, 2011

Every couple years there's a new attempt at "sexy" crossover classical music--and they all roll through Seoul. None of them lasts and none of them makes a real difference.

I hope at least they still fit in their leather pants.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:39 PM on February 6, 2011