Gustavo Beytelmann

Gustavo Beytelmann was my composition teacher when I studied bandoneon at the Rotterdam Conservatory from 1993 to 1998. Since the death of Osvaldo Pugliese in 1995, Gustavo Beytelmann is the artistic director of the tango department.

I have visited him again and again at his Parisian home to talk to him about all kinds of things related to tango, music and life in general. What Beytelmann had to tell about these matters was always so exciting and enriching, full of life experience. Their opinions were always surprising and encouraged me to rethink my previous knowledge.

In the following podcast, Beytelmann talks about the tango scene in Paris, in the period between the two world wars and since 1976, when he, like many other musicians, had to flee the Argentine dictatorship to Paris and live there in exile.

This is the first part of a long conversation I had with him in November 1998.

Listen today to the second part of my conversation with Gustavo Beytelmann, which I had with him in November 1998 at his Parisian home.

In it we talk about how Beytelmann became a composer and what kind of music he composes. We talk about the young musical talents who are reviving tango, and we also talk about whether tango has a future in Europe.

Also listen to part 2 of the interview

Purchase the exact transcript of the interview

Part of the interview with Gustavo Beytelmann

“Bachicha was the author of the tango Bandoneón arrabalero. Well, it’s a well-known tango. Well, I don’t know the story well, but these people… they made the adventure of coming to Europe and stayed. Both Pizarro and Bachicha were people who did very well professionally here and stayed.

Later, we know that there were people who went and who came; like Canaro, like Gardel, like all those people. Then, at the end of the Second World War, there was another generation of people who were… who had been well known in Argentina, such as Hector Grané; pianist… this… good and other people.

I want to remember what Caldarella was called, the bandoneonist. Those people had stayed in Paris in ’46, ’47 and worked, as I would say, very humbly in… Caldarella I knew and was in the orchestra of Bachicha’s son, who had the orchestra since the time his father had it in the Coupole that is; in the golden age of the Couple that is, it is a story … tango and coupole is also quite a long story.

And Caldarella played there, as did Ernesto Rondó, who had been Canaro’s singer at the beginning of the 40s in Argentina. Well, then there were those people. And then, we must not forget, that he also passed through here, let’s say between 40 and 50, Astor Piazzolla, studying with Nadia Boulanger and writing.

So much so that today still many of the scores and… well, the orchestras played tango. The cabaret orchestras that existed at that time could have two and three bandoneons and played a tango repertoire. The tango repertoire that the orchestras played were standard arrangements, which in Argentina came out through the Julio Korn publishing house and I think that here they came out through the Editions Universelles. Well, then many orchestras played and did tango, they did repertoire, the traditional Argentine repertoire let’s say tango.

To dance, Piazzolla told me, but I think they are also in the books that there was a good orchestra in a cabaret in Montmartre, here near where he lived, because Piazzolla lived near here, which is the rue de Douai. Well and there were other Argentines like Lalo Schifrin who studied the recordings… Piazzolla’s first tango recordings in France was Lalo Schifrin who played… one of the guys who played the piano. Well. This… and another was Marcial Solar.

And well, Piazzolla told me that he was going to this cabaret that I can’t remember what his name is there in Montmartre and there was an orchestra, which was Marcel Feijoo’s orchestra with whom Piazzolla later recorded with the strings and all those famous albums… this… bandoneon string orchestra with piano. “

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