Horacio Salgán – The Master
Today I present to you an exceptional interview of which I am very proud: In 1999 I had the great joy of being able to chat with one of my favorite composers at a tango festival in Zurich: the great Horacio Salgan.
I had already met him personally a few years ago in Buenos Aires, when he had invited us to his home. These are unforgettable memories because this great tango master had played in his salon for us his favorite tangos.
In Zurich Horacio Salgan told me that in his youth he had also founded a jazz orchestra and studied music theory, which surprised everyone and he was called “El loco”.
He told me about his idols Roberto Firpo and Julio De Caro. And how he met guitarist Ubaldo de Lio, with whom he played for almost 50 years.
Unfortunately we were interrupted in the middle of this very exciting talk.
Listen for yourselves to what this great composer and pianist, Maestro Horacio Salgan, told me!
Part of the interview transcript
The first thing I have to say is that I am very happy to be here in Switzerland, in Zurich. It is such a beautiful country, everyone knows that, but I am talking about the impression I have. It really is a beauty. Well, then I have to talk about the festival; it was very nice for us to play yesterday in this magnificent theater, so extraordinary, with an organ that is wonderful.
And I remember my time as an organist, because I was also a church organist and organist in the halls as well. So seeing such a magnificent organ brings back nice memories, nice things. Well, and we, this, yesterday we played with…uh…we always play the same way with great affection, with great dedication, great love, right? You never play like that, in an indifferent way, do you? if you don’t really play with it…
So that’s how it was played, and the audience reacted really very well, didn’t they? Very well. So we had a very good time, didn’t we, us playing and having a good time and the audience too. So the show ended very very very very nice, this one, very good, very successful. For us it was very nice, it was really very nice.
Buy the full transcript of the interview with Horacio Salgan
Wikipedia
Horacio Adolfo Salgán (Buenos Aires, June 15, 1916 – ibidem, August 19, 2016)1 was an Argentine pianist, composer and orchestra conductor, considered one of the maximum referents of tango and one of the initiators of the so-called “avant-garde tango”.
In his performance as a musical performer, his duo with the guitarist Ubaldo de Lío, one of the milestones in the history of tango and the Quinteto Real, which both formed in the 1960s together with other great tango figures, such as Enrique Mario Francini (violin), Pedro Laurenz (bandoneon) and Rafael Ferro (double bass). Among his works, the well-known tango A fuego lento stands out. In 2005 Horacio Salgán received the Konex de Brillante Award, the highest recognition of the Konex Foundation, for his place in Popular Music.
From the time he was born, he heard his father play the piano in the living room as an amateur. He began studying piano at the age of six. At thirteen he was already the best student at the Municipal Conservatory, where he played works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel. Due to the economic needs of his family, in 1930 (at the age of fourteen) he began to work, accompanying the piano in the matinees of the cinema of his neighborhood.
He played in dance orchestras, weddings and similar events, and as a church organist. At the age of 18 he joined the staff of Radio Belgrano as a soloist. He was soon summoned by other radio stations as a soloist, accompanist of singers and member of orchestras of the most diverse genres. He accompanied the folkloric duo Martínez-Ledesma, taking over from two pianists who preceded him: “Mono” Villegas and Carlos García.
At the age of 20, he was discovered by Roberto Firpo (a tango bandleader), who hired Salgán for his orchestra. That same year (1936) he made his debut as arranger of Miguel Caló’s orchestra.
At the end of 1942 he made his first recording (on the RCA record company), and in 1944 he summoned several tango musicians to create his own orchestra. He was fired from Radio Belgrano and later from the RCA label because they considered that his orchestra sounded “weird” (with too many dissonances) and his singer Edmundo Rivero sang “badly” (with too much syncopated rhythm). There are no records of that first orchestra, nor of the first tangos with Edmundo Rivero. His orchestra lasted until 1947. From that moment on, Salgán devoted himself to composing and teaching, and in 1950 he returned with a new orchestra.
Video Horacio Salgán – Ubaldo De Lio
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