About the album

LAMENTO – a personal affair

You have referred to “Lamento” on the one hand as an “insane project”, on the other as a “matter of the heart”. How do insanity and the heart go together?

Insanity and the heart fortunately go very well together. The project of doing Bach concertos with a chamber ensemble of solo strings had been going around in my head for almost a decade. And Bach, in a way, is the core of the programme on this CD. His music often tends to be combined with other works: with new music, or with Romantic music. Piazzolla’s Four Seasons are often coupled with those of Vivaldi. Thus the idea of combining Baroque music with tango isn’t new. But this specific repertoire is something quite different.

Then we have my personal journey with tango: my ensemble Cuarteto SolTango and my passion for dance. What grew out of all this? A rather large-scale project (for chamber music), with musicians from many different countries – and an intense week I will probably never forget.

Bach and tango: why, for your ears, do they fit so well together?

First and foremost, they obviously each stand for themselves. We play tango as tango, and Bach as Bach. The combination emerged from my personal connection with each of them. What is more, the Lamento runs like a red thread through the entire programme. I hear lamentation in each of these styles. The title Lamento is inspired by the tango song Mi lamento, and lamentation naturally plays an outstanding role in Bach’s music: not always, but quite often. (Excerpt from the booklet)