Håkon Skogstad And His Tango Obsession
Håkon Skogstad And His Tango Obsession
It's nice to realize one's passion and then take it over the top.
What is there about the Tango not to like? It is a music steeped in Southern Hemisphere humidity and sensuousness. It is a music of movement, undulation, and determined desire. The great Astor Piazzolla made a worldwide cottage industry of the genre, one immediately assimilating talent and thought from well beyond its Argentinian home: Norwegian pianist/composer Håkon Skogstad, for example. Here is a fellow from about as far away from Argentina as if he were on the moon, outperforming many of the locals in depth and breadth of creativity and performance.
Skogstad has released three recordings dedicated to different aspects of Tango highlighting the “classical music” elements of the localized music, opening it up for new audiences.
Håkon Skogstad - Two Hands To Tango (Advantanto Records, 2018)
Skogstad’s debut recording was for solo piano. The nine performances are vibrantly captured and exhibit gigantic sonics, spatially secured for the most thoroughly realized playback. Skogstad possesses a sensitive ear for drama, performing “Los Mareados” with Bill Evans's sensitivity tempered with Oscar Peterson's disposition. On “Sentimiento Tanguero” and “Tango del Ángel” the pianists imagine the Tangos if composed by Brahms and performed by Liszt.
While solo piano treatments of Tango offer a skeletal view of the compositions, Skogstad's orchestral performance method makes these treatments expansive in tone and clarity. The pianist is on a mission, one where he can help redefine Tango while investigating it closely. Two Hands To Tango is an approachable recording that reveals its subject so that it is understood and enjoyed.
Håkon Skogstad - Visions of Tango (Øra Fonogram, 2021)
Håkon Skogstad expands his palette from a solo instrument on Two Hands To Tango to the orchestral on Visions of Tango. The pianist opens this ambitious disc ambitiously with his four-movement Concerto For Piano And String Orchestra, supported by the Trondheim Soloists under the direction of Atle Sponberg. The concerto is broadly Romantic with robust flourishes of virtuosity (demonstrated amply on Two Hands To Tango) and lyrical string passages having the sweep of a soundtrack. Justly so as this recording celebrated Astor Piazzolla’s centenary.
The four-movement Histoire du Tango, originally composed for flute and guitar by Piazzolla, explores the evolution of Tango in thematic vignettes. Where the Concerto For Piano And String Orchestra was frankly classically directed, Histoire du Tango successfully teetered between the performance hall and the parlor. “Bordel 1900” depicts a smoky excursion to a bordello, while “Cafe 1930” is lunch with friends on a languid afternoon with much wine, laughing, and reminiscence. “Nightclub, 1960” bustles with mirth and joy, with much drink and dancing. “Concert d’aujourd’hui” (“Modern Day Concert”) brings tango music into the present where it becomes entangled with Late Romantic classical music and looks forward to a future where artists like Håkon Skogstad shepherd it into the future.
Håkon Skogstad - 8 Concepts Of Tango (Øra Fonogram, 2024)
And, that future is now. These eight concepts are romance made tangible in the light of the tango genre. Tuneful, lyrical, and harmonically complex without sounding so, Skogstad completes what has since been termed is Tango Trilogy. It bears equal parts study, dance, concentration, relaxation, and release. “A Contemplative Rhapsody” is an alchemic result of the composer’s efforts to broaden the rhythmic and harmonic elements of tango, not unlike what Strauss tried to accomplish with his programmatic “Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald” except that Skogstad infuses the piece with contemporary thought. “Tango Contra Tango” is Johann Sebastian Bach after swallowing the ball of opium he meant to smoke, falling into a humid Buenos Aires dream. “Lamento” closes the disc with its languid mood and slow, deep pace. Håkon is showing us the future and it is promising.