Con-tem-po

Guitare, bandonéon et violoncelle

This piece has been separately published without the bandoneon part and reviewed by me elsewhere, so I will not burden the reader with all the musical details except where new and relevant to this publication.

The most important question is: is the trio, which I am assured is the original version of the piece simply the duo, with an extra part added? Well, no, not really.

The piece is the same length, so there are no new sections. However the parts are subtly different.

The guitar for one has a number of differences around bars 34 and the following 5 bars or so, but the rest is identical. The cello part has a number of differences beginning with the bars 25 to 62, which have been substantially re-written to account for the bandoneon part that takes some melodic material subsequently given over to the cello in the duet arrangement. There are more differences around 106 - 117 where the D.S. al Coda kicks in.

As for the bandoneon part, it is written on two staves and spends the opening section adding chords to the existing music, until bar 25 when it takes over the melodic material, and although it has a number of silent moments one can see that its addition is quite substantial to the overall effect, especially of making the piece sound even more like Piazzolla than it already does!

So, if this trio version is more in keeping than the duet one then this is the one to go for.
Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)