Jeanne Golan: It Takes One to Tango
Steinway & Sons

It Takes One to Tango features consummately poised performances by pianist Jeanne Golan of material by eight composers, some living and others who died during the Nazi regime; it's to the latter that the subtitle's ‘recovered voices' refers. Yes, the pieces are generally tango-inspired, but the collection is anything but one-dimensional. The repertoire ranges widely in style, tone, and date, with tango here acting as stabilizing ground more than point of demarcation. A pianist of formidable ability and a Professor of Music at SUNY/Nassau, Golan wholly invests herself in these performances, the strength of her commitment reflected in the fact that she corresponded with the living composers in order to present their pieces with integrity and accuracy.

That some of the material is by composers who perished during WWII might suggest the tone of the project will be sombre in the extreme. However, moments of lightness and even joy abound, which doesn't entirely surprise when one considers that some of the creators were absorbing the jazz and music-hall sounds popular in Europe at the time. Consequently, their works are grounded in popular music forms more than classical proper, the result a consistently engaging album. The set-list here is in keeping with Golan's general approach, which involves seeking out unknown and overlooked pieces and promoting works by new composers. Engaging early suites by Wilhelm Grosz and Erwin Schulhoff form a bridge to the future for contemporary pieces by Pablo Ortiz, Eric Moe, Chester Biscardi, Theodore Wiprud, and Toby Twining.

Single-handedly revealing how expansive tango-inspired material can be, the album opens with the vivid Three Pieces by the Buenos Aires-born Ortiz, its rhapsodic “Bianco” providing initial entrancement and the dramatically angular “Piglia” a succinct demonstration of Golan's prowess. Dedicated to Ortiz, Moe's contemplative Laminar Flow in Upsidedown Creek meanders relaxedly in a manner befitting its title. The title of Biscardi's Incitation to Desire derives from a 1944 Grove Dictionary of Music characterization of the tango as “less presentable to a polite audience” than the habanera and as “nothing but an incitation to desire”; there's certainly little that's vulgar about Golan's enticing rendering of the romantic setting, however. Drawing on his experience of a lunch encounter with a Filipina hostess and her women friends, Wiprud's Pacita's Lunch evokes the high energy of the gathering as it wends its uproarious way through eleven lively minutes. From slapping the piano frame to dreamy and percussive episodes, the piece registers as both fantasia-like tapestry and showcase. The album ends on a charming note when Twining's delectably bluesy An American in Buenos Aires features Golan augmenting piano with a toy piano she found discarded on a trash heap outside her home a few years back.

Works by three ‘recovered voices' enrich the programme. Originally from Poland, Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) escaped Nazi capture by moving to the United States and is represented here by the mazurka-based Reverie D'Automne, Op. 6, a brief tone poem that sprinkles graceful Impressionistic musings with Spanish seasoning. The five-part City Tanzsuite II, Op. 20 by Grosz (1894-1939), who fled Austria in 1933 and landed in New York before dying of health problems, exemplifies a strong jazz influence but covers ample ground in its multiple dance forms. Whereas a Gershwin-like joie de vivre informs “Foxtrot” and “Shimmy,” “Boston,” a speakeasy dance designed to allow same-sex couples to be physically close in a social setting, exudes ponderous elegance; meanwhile, the central movement “Tango” presents the recording's first overt excursion into the form. Schulhoff (1894-1942), a Czech composer who died in a German concentration camp, is also represented by a five-movement work, in his case 1927's Etudes de Jazz. Here too dance forms are the focus, though they're reshaped in accordance with their creator's avant-garde sensibility. That said, they don't stray so far that their connections to the blues, the charleston, and of course the tango become inaudible.

January 2022