Media : Listen

Chester Biscardi, piano
4 October 2007
Reisinger Concert Hall
Sarah Lawrence College

Incitation to Desire (Tango), for piano (1984), was written for Yvar Mikhashoff who first performed it at the North American New Music Festival in Buffalo on April 14, 1985 and whose recording of it appears on a New Albion release in 1995. It was originally published by Quadrivium Music Press as part of the International Tango Collection which included 88 composers as varied as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Virgil Thomson. The Skaneateles Festival commissioned a version for clarinet, horn, violin, violoncello, percussion and piano which was premiered on September 3, 1993 and is dedicated to pianist Robert Weirich and ‘cellist Lindsay Groves; a version for solo marimba, commissioned by Makoto Nakura, was first performed in Kyoto on June 11, 2006. It is in one short movement starting with a brief, flashy introduction, then the tango itself entitled “In the style of a tango-canción” (originally a vocal form with instrumental accompaniment and strong sentimental character) with abstracted characteristic habanera rhythmic patterns in 2/4 meter and sentimental melody, and then a brief, driving coda. The title comes from H. C. Colles’ “Tango” entry in the Fifth Volume of the 1944 Third Edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians: “The movements of the dance are less presentable to a polite audience than those of the Habanera, and as now performed in the cafés chantants of Madrid and other cities of Spain the Tango has become nothing but an incitation to desire.”

Videocassette: 88 Tangos, March 1, 1986, (Yvar Mikhashoff, piano; Jeff Fontaine, lighting), Dance Theater Workshop and Composers’ Forum; Nominated in the Best Instrumental Performance Category, 2nd Annual Gay/Lesbian American Music Awards (GLAMA), 1998, for Incitation to Desire (Tango), for piano (1984), performed by Anthony de Mare on Gay American Composers (CRI CD 721).