Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas

Although Astor Piazzolla didn’t originally conceive of or compose the four concise movements of this work as a self-contained suite, he definitely had Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in mind when he wrote Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) between 1965 and 1970, beginning with Verano Porteño (Buenos Aires Summer)—the title of the work incorporates the word “porteño”, local slang for a Buenos Aires resident. All four parts contain an explicit quotation from Vivaldi’s masterpiece. Piazzolla wrote the first movement for the Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz play Melenita de oro (Hair of Gold), but didn’t pick up the project again until 1969, when he wrote Otoño Porteño (Buenos Aires Autumn). The last two movements came a year later, and were debuted in 1970 as a suite by his Quinteto Nuevo Tango, consisting of violin, piano, electric guitar, double bass and the composer’s own bandoneon. Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov made a new arrangement of the piece between 1996 and 1998, playing up the connections to Vivaldi and inverting the order of the seasons according to the Northern Hemisphere.