‘Angeles y Diablos’ is the third release by Isabelle van Keulen and her ensemble devoted to the artistry of Astor Piazzolla.

The angel as a symbol of the tango-dance, death and resurrection. Without losing the romance, the violence, eroticism and devotion of the traditional tango that he saw as empty and hollowed out, Piazzolla renewed and modified it with elements of European art music, Argentine folklore and jazz, and thus tango took on a new meaning and shape.

The writer Alberto Rodriguez Munoz approached Piazzolla in 1961 with a request to write music for his play Tango del angel, which is about an angel appearing in an apartment block in Buenos Aires to cleanse the souls of its inhabitants. The titles Introduccion al angel, Milonga del angel, and Muerte del angel were created. The latter, a four-part fugue with hard, uncompromising harmonies and rhythms, impressively shows how far Piazzolla pushed the boundaries of traditional tango. When the play was performed in 1962, even the previously hostile parts of the musical public in Argentina had to admit how fitting and successful this music was and the titles, especially Milonga del angel, gained extraordinary popularity.

The motives of angel, Angel, and devil, Diablo, appear in many of the tangos composed by Astor Piazzolla: “In my story, angels and devils mix – you have to have something in everything.” For a concert with his quintet at the Philharmonic Hall in New York in 1965, he wrote the series of Diablo titles: the spooky Tango del diablo, the intimate Romance del diablo and the wild, lashing Vayamos al diablo.

The Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble was initiated in 2011 by the internationally well-established violinist and violist Isabelle van Keulen, following her Carte Blanche concert series in the Concertgebouw Haarlem, the Netherlands, with the purpose to perform Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo master works to the highest technical and musical standards.

Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble:
- Isabelle van Keulen (violin)
- Christian Gerber (bandoneon)
- Ulrike Payer (piano)
- Rudiger Ludwig (double bass)