Tango Goes Symphony

Regular: £11.49

Sale: £11.49
Regular

Out of Stock

Unit Price: per

Cat No: 8557004

Release Date: 12 January 2002

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313200429

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Tango Goes Symphony

Description
Tango Goes SymphonyA popular song of the 1950s, guyed brilliantly by Hermione Gingold and Gilbert Harding, suggestively invited us to "…do the tango …the dance of love." The tango has always retained its image of a dance unashamedly sexual in character and such indeed was its origin. Cultivated in the slums and initially repudiated by the upper classes of Argentina, time and changing fashion had altered it to win the approval of its former detractors. The origin of the word tango remains debatable. The Argentinian writer Eros Nicola Siri suggests, with some probability, that it was of African origin, from tangano, a Negro dance transplanted to central and southern America in the eighteenth century by slaves working on the Cuban and Haitian plantations. Another writer derives it from the old Spanish word taño (from tañer, to play an instrument). Whatever the derivation of the word, however, all authorities now agree that by the 1850s Cuban tangos and habaneras were already in common currency throughout Latin America. Nearer to our own time, the tango was to become the most popular of all Argentine urban dances. The modern tango supposedly developed in the poorer dockland districts of Buenos Aires, where after 1870 large numbers of European immigrants had settled. They introduced music from their own culture which, combined with and sanitised by certain gaucho traditions, resulted in what the pre-war books on ballroom dancing refer to as "the Argentine Tango". The earliest tango, however, was actually an aggressive, even violent dance, purporting to portray knife fights and acts of a sexual nature, generally accompanied by the violin, guitar and flute. Increasingly, however, the accordion replaced the guitar in the tango and before long its enormous popularity in Argentina resulted in larger groups being formed to play it. Of these the composer-bandleader Vicente Greco (1889-1924) was reputedly the first to standardise a typical tango ensemble, with which he recorded as early as 1911. The tango spread throughout Europe after its introduction to Parisian society by Camille de Rhynal, a dance teacher who in 1907 rounded off the rough edges and jerky movements of an original hitherto always considered too coarse for the ballroom. George Grossmith and Phyllis Dare danced it in London in 1912 in The Sunshine Girl at the Gaiety Theatre and the exhibition dancers Vernon and Irene Castle popularised it in the United States from about 1913. By the end of the First World War it was very much in vogue, and certainly it was at its height in Great Britain in the early 1920s. The decline of ballroom dancing in the 1950s inevitably meant that the tango lost a great deal of its popularity in Europe and the United States. In Argentina, however, it has retained its position as the national dance and as such has continued to hold an important place in the affections of the composers of that country. The present release offers four
Tracklisting