Upssala XVIII International Guitar Festival. Tribute concert Astor Piazzolla 100 years

We get to experience his double concerto for bandoneon, guitar and chamber orchestra. Beautiful and suggestive music filled with everything that characterizes tango: passion, ecstasy, consuming melancholy and pain.

In addition, during the festival, Piazzolla's wonderful tribute to his hometown is performed: "The four seasons of Buenos Aires", Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas for solo violin and orchestra. Virtuo's music that, like the model Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, shapes how the moods in the city change with the seasons. Here is the heat, the longing, the dance, the joy. But also peaceful moments, and a dose of melancholy.

Participants
Roberto Aussel, guitar
Leticia Moreno, violin
Jens Lundberg, bandoneon
Alejo Falces, vocals
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Conductor, Christian Karlsen

Roberto Aussel
In 1981, Piazzolla composed his well-known Five Pieces for Guitar directly for Argentine guitarist Roberto Aussel. He tours all over the world and in addition to Piazzolla's music has a wide repertoire, which in addition to the great classics includes a large part of the music of our time. Many great guitar composers have written music for Aussel: Marius Constant, Marlos Nobre, François Rossé, Norbert Leclerc, José Luis Campana, Francis Schwartz, Juan María Solare, Francis Kleynjans, Bob Wander, Carlos Grätzer, Edmundo Vasquez, Pascale Jakubowski, to name a few a few.

Roberto Aussel studied for Jorge Martinez Zarate and has won first prizes at some of the most prestigious guitar competitions in the world, including the international guitar competitions in Radio France, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Alirio Diaz in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2016, Aussel received the Jose Tomas honorary award at the Petrer Guitar Festival in Spain. Roberto Aussel has been a professor of guitar playing at the Cologne Academy of Music for many years.

Leticia Moreno
Leticia Moreno is internationally renowned for her natural charisma and unique ability to load music with intensity and expressiveness. She was born in Spain and has strong ties with Latin America. She regularly visits the world's major concert stages and orchestras and collaborates with conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Zubin Mehta, Paavo Jarvi and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Her latest album, released on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon, with music by Piazzolla was played in the legendary Abbey Road studio in London and in the Emil Berliner Studio in Berlin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. At the same company, she has recently released two more albums, one with Dmitri Shostakovich's first violin concerto and Spanish music by mixed Sarasate, Lorca, Granados and de Falla - Spanish Landscapes.

Leticia Moreno has studied for Zakhar Bron, Maxim Vengerov and Mstislav Rostropovich in Madrid, at the University of Music and Dance in Cologne and at the Guildhall School in London. She has also won several international violin competitions such as Szeryng, Concertino Praga, Novosibirsk, Sarasate and Kreisler. She has also been selected as the Rising Star by the European Concert Hall Organization - ECHO.

Christian Karlsen
Christian Karlsen, conductor, is one of Sweden's most acclaimed music profiles. He won a Grammy for best classical album in 2021 together with guitarist Jacob Kellermann and in 2021 has also participated in SVT's program Kontrapunkt.
He is critically acclaimed for his Haydn and Mozart interpretations, but has a strong focus on contemporary music. Already as a 20-year-old he collaborated with Karlheinz Stockhausen and has ever since worked with most of the world's foremost composers, including polar prize winners Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho and Sofia Gubaidulina. He regularly conducts top orchestras in Sweden and internationally.

Jens Lundberg
Jens Lundberg, bandoneon, studied for the Argentine bandoneon virtuoso Juan José Mosalini at the Edgar Varèse Conservatory in Paris, where he graduated. He has also taken lessons in Buenos Aires for masters such as Nestor Marconi and Walter Rios. He has performed both as a soloist and with various ensembles around Scandinavia, Europe, Japan and Argentina. His repertoire includes both traditional tango and tango nuevo, baroque music and music from the classical period. He also often performs newly written music. He received the 2012 Albin Hagström Award.

Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (TCO) was founded in 1993 by conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. Over the past three decades, it has become one of Estonia's signature orchestras and a welcome guest on many stages in Europe and around the world. TCO has received recognition for its style-sensitive game and its brilliant interpretations. The orchestra's repertoire ranges from baroque and vienna classicism to romance and music from the 20th and 2000s.

Alejo Falces
Alejo Falces, Argentinian singer, first studied classical piano and singing at the Buenos Aires Municipal Conservatory of Music. He continued his singing studies at the famous Colón Opera House in Buenos Aires. Despite his classical music education, popular music has followed him since childhood. After moving to Miami, he released his first album "Cumpliendo un sueño" and consolidated his position as a tango singer and toured Latin America. In 2019, he participated in the World Tango Festival in Buenos Aires with the orchestra of the famous musician and composer Leonardo Marconi.