But the tango has proved far more popular and more durable than any other such modern-era dance craze. Ragtime, jazz, and popular dances such as the Charleston, shimmy, and foxtrot were soon adopted by forward-looking composers and cast as recital and concert pieces. The beguiling tunes and insinuating rhythms of tango music not only attracted dancers and dance bands they also caught the attention of composers around the world who in the late 19th and early 20th century were zealously exploring their national heritage of folk music and now began delving into vernacular music from cities as well as from the countryside. Tango seduced avant-garde artists too, enacting the insolence, eroticism, transgression, and enthrallment central to such au courant movements as Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. It appealed strongly to cosmopolitan Parisians already fascinated by the sensual, “primitive,” and voluptuous innovations of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe as well as the provocative syncopations of jazz also recently imported from the New World. The basic steps are simple, but can be elaborated to a high level of bravura and finesse. It’s easy to see why: urban and urbane, the tango is unhurried but athletic, elegant but sensuous, a tug-of-war between precision and abandon, a choreographic stylization of seduction. First picked up among sophisticated Parisian socialites, it quickly became a hugely popular dance craze, spreading rapidly to London, Berlin, and New York City. But the tango became an even more successful transplant when it leapt across the Atlantic and caught on in Paris in the early 1900s. It began as a souped-up habanera, a slower dance made famous in 1875 (and familiar to almost everyone still) from Bizet’s hyper-sexed opera Carmen. And the very close and rich sound makes it feel as if the listener is being treated to his/her own private performance by a top-notch dance ensemble.The tango was born in the late 1800s in Buenos Aires, where it was first danced in grimy bars and brothels. As a whole, the album isn't as fiery or recklessly passionate as to carry the listener away completely, but it is plenty infectious regardless. The Albéniz has a naturally gentle charm, and the same can be said of Viveza's arrangements of Stalman's Viejas Ideas and Grothe's Schreib mir einen Brief! When the group gets into the tangos written after the 1930s, its members play more freely and with more verve, particularly in A Evaristo Carriego and the Piazzolla tangos and generally wherever they can let go with showy technique. Both are played with just a bit of élan and drama, but not too much. The program starts with the familiar: Gade's Jalousie and Albéniz's Tango in D, two European stylizations or refinements of the common dance. The mix of works, from Gade to Piazzolla, not only samples the variety of forms and styles of tango, but also shows how composers like Stravinsky put their unique spin on it. It has a respect for the music that means everyone pays attention to the coloring and emotion of each piece, but they don't let that get in the way of their enjoyment of playing the music. 'Devoted' is the right word, because the ensemble really does love this music. Tango Tango is its release devoted to the group's favorite dance. Its members never seem to have problems with intonation or with timing, and they all feel the music together, so that the listener is treated to some pretty high standards of music-making. Viveza is a chamber ensemble that really knows its stuff.
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