Artemis Quartet Piazzolla Project

For the past 10 years, Artemis Quartet cellist Eckart Runge has been engaged in a side gig with pianist Jacques Ammon, entitled "Celloproject", playing the music of tango-master Astor Piazzolla and other Latin-tinged composers. Now the two bring the project to the rest of the Artemis Quartet, for a recording that pulses with the beat of South America.

Runge explains: "The idea of the Piazzolla Project was to bring the authentic sonic and expressive palette of the tango to life with the inexhaustible possibilities of the string quartet, the piano trio, and the piano quintet. Sometimes melting into the melancholy tones of the bandoneon, sometimes breaking out into the raw heterogeneity of the tango quintet, it represented a completely new encounter with sound, rhythm, style, and gesture. It was a pleasure for me to share with my quartet colleagues the experience I had gathered over the years in my engagement with this culture. They were enthused by the depth and variety of the tango. For all of us, this music was a great inspiration and it exercised an enriching influence on our involvement with the classical chamber repertoire."