Review: Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark

Piazzolla (right) with his son Daniel in New York

 

A week after attending the Hong Kong Philharmonic's tribute to Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola, I went to see a documentary about him as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Called Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark, it uses extensive film and recording footage from the family to reconstruct his life.

Before the movie started, we were supposed to be treated to a musician playing the bandoneon, the accordion-like instrument Piazzolla played, but this was cancelled due to social-distancing. Nevertheless we were told that the bandoneon is not like an accordion in that there is no keyboard, but lots of buttons on each side and you can't see them so you have to know how to play the bandoneon well.

Piazzolla and his bandoneon

It is also quite heavy, which is why many bandoneon players sit down, but Piazzolla preferred to stand. When playing the instrument moving the bellows in and out can result in key changes, playing one note then changing to another which was interesting to learn.

These tips helped us appreciate the film more, particularly watching Piazzolla play -- it's quite heavy and early on in Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark, after he was born, his right leg was disfigured because of polio and it took seven operations to fix it, though not completely; his right leg would forever be thinner and shorter than his left.

After having gone through so much when he was young, his parents decided not to have anymore children, but also his father may have felt Piazzolla learning an instrument would be better for him career-wise. After those operations in 1924, the family moved to New York from Buenos Aires by ship, and his father worked for a barber. 

He bought his eight-year-old son a bandoneon from a pawnshop and Piazzolla learned how to play it and was pretty good at it. He wanted to play JS Bach on the bandoneon as well as his teacher did on the piano.

Piazzolla's teacher Nadia Boulanger

When he was 17-years-old, Piazzolla was itching to perform and have his own orchestra and on his own moved back to Buenos Aires. He played with some bands -- the youngest of the group. Piazzolla had always had dreams of becoming a concert pianist and one time boldly met Arthur Rubenstein, who in turn introduced the young musician to teacher Alberto Ginastera, who taught him composition and the fundamentals of music.

In 1946 Piazzolla started his own band, though later focusing only on compositions, not wanting to play the bandoneon anymore.

It was winning a composing contest in 1951 that awarded him a scholarship to study in Paris under Nadia Boulanger, whose students include Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach.

She looked at the Argentine's scores and said this is not Piazzolla. She asked him what instrument he played and he said the bandoneon and she made him play some tango pieces.

This, she said, was Piazzolla.

He said from then onwards he never stopped playing the bandoneon.

In 1955 Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires bursting with creativity and created his own style of tango, where the rhythm kept changing, more upbeat and experimenting with different sounds from instruments. 

Daniel did not speak to his father for 10 years

Traditionalists hated him -- even a taxi driver refused to pick him up for what he felt was ruining tango.

His personal life was also full of ups and downs. He married Dede Baralis and had two children, Daniel and Diana. But later on Piazzolla announced to the family he was leaving his wife and met his second love, Laura Escalada.

Needless to say the family was shocked -- his wife Dede sank into deep depression, after having supported her husband's career.

His son Daniel, shown in the film, had a falling out with his father at one point, claiming the music they were making was backwards. That led to a 10-year estrangement. Daniel goes over old tapes, recordings, family movies, as a museum prepares a major exhibition about his father.

Piazzolla perseveres, but not without health issues (smoking a lot and suffered a heart attack). One of the final scenes in the documentary shows him in a tuxedo performing with an orchestra, making his music legitimate in the classical music world, though he had been experimenting with all kinds of musicians and different styles throughout the decades.

Piazzolla is known for revolutionizing the tango

He was so passionate about his music, writing 750 compositions, many of them themed around the tango. In the end he was grateful to his father for giving him the bandoneon, for without it he would not know what he would have done with his life.

Director Daniel Rosenfeld went through a lot of raw material, tapes, recordings, family films, using archival footage to put most of the documentary together. Piazzolla's son Daniel is a vehicle to move from one aspect to another, and sometimes he says things, and other times it's recordings of his father and sometimes it was confusing to follow who is speaking. 

Not once does any subject do a straight-up interview to the camera. It is either narrated or clips are found from actual archival footage, which makes the film flow. And yes there's lots of Piazzolla performing, making it a film filled with music, music and more music.

Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark 

Director: Daniel Rosenfeld

94 minutes 

In Spanish, French and English with English subtitles