Happy 100th Birthday, Astor Piazzolla!

At PH Pianos, we are inspired by those who dare to do things differently. Much like the designer behind our pianos- Danish design icon Poul Henningsen- the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla became a celebrated emblem of change in his field. Piazzolla, a 20th-century bandoneon player with jazz in his blood and an international star-studded education, was one of the key figures to revolutionize the wildly popular genre of Tango.

Piazzolla's modernist ideas, and break from tradition, reminds us of the trailblazing tendencies of Poul Henningsen, who in the 1930s created the four piano designs completely unlike any instruments before or after him. Rather than working with the constraints of existing ideas of what a piano ‘should be’, Henningsen took his design literally out of the box, bringing the resonating and moving parts of the instrument to full view.

Piazzolla did something similar with the Tango in his compositions. Traditionally, tango was a genre characterized by specific and rigid style markers and performed at a dance tempo and truly ‘dance’ music rather than ‘music for listening.’ Piazzolla used the genre to bring to light different sounds, forms, and expressions that broke with tradition. Many defenders of traditional tango did not support his music, but his popularity and fame grew steadily throughout his life. Today, his music is probably the most-often performed of all classical Latin-American composers.

Astor Piazzolla, whose 100th birthday was March 11th, composed this piece in 1965 as a part of a larger work (which has its own interesting story)- and we wanted to celebrate his birthday on this instrument. The gorgeous piece has a characteristic dance rhythm and a wistful, almost inevitable-sounding melody.

Both Henningsen and Piazzolla valued excellence and authenticity in their respective crafts, and that is what we wanted to honor in this birthday tribute to Astor Piazzolla. The video was shot in our beautiful showroom in the heart of Copenhagen on the PH Grand Piano, Excellence Edition. This incredible instrument is so unusual and futuristic- but the design is close to 100 years old! It is this marriage of history and modernism that captivates us- both in Piazzolla’s Milonga, and in this beautiful grand piano.