Review

Lucía Álvarez
Albur Tango: for Trombone and Piano

Vancouver, BC, Canada
Publisher: Cherry Classics Music
Date of Publication: 1996 / 2023
URL: http://www.cherryclassics.com

Piano score and solo part

Primary Genre: Solo Tenor Trombone - with piano

The composer lives in Mexico City where she was born in 1948. She has written more than 100 concert works, and has also worked in film and television. Albur was commissioned by the Department of Music and Opera of the INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura) and written in 1996. It’s dedicated to Juan Ibáñez (1938 - 2000), a Mexican actor, film director, writer, and composer. The world premiere was given in 1997 by Gustavo Rosales and pianist Margarita Munoz, who subsequently recorded it on their CD Preludio a lo Impredecible (Prelude to the Unpredictable), released in 2002, and currently available internationally from several on-line retailers.

Albur can have many meanings, including chance or risk, and this is an exciting piece, highly charged emotionally, and written in an extended tonal style without key signatures, and with many cluster chords in the piano part. The tempo is flexible throughout, with frequent indications of stringendo, Poco rit. and a tempo. There are large dynamic contrasts and much use is made of glissandi. It’s technically demanding in both parts, into which the novel concept of the ‘glissando lento’ is introduced. The expressive range is large; at one point, the piano part has a marking of seco, pesante, followed five measures later by Apassionato e cantabile. At m110 the trombonist is instructed to ‘scream or cry out with much emotion!’ Other markings include ‘drammatico’, and the pianist is instructed over 7 measures to ‘hit the ground hard with your shoe’. The piece ends on a dissonance, marked secco, as if to say “this dance isn’t finished yet….”

The trombone part is given in tenor and bass clefs; overall range is E-flat - d2.