(Source: El tango, el bandoneón y sus intérpretes, Tomo III, Oscar Zucchi; via malena-tango.com. Translation by Tango Decoder.)
Pedro Laurenz's debut with De Caro’s orchestra took place in a tense and anxiously expectant climate at the Vogue Club in Recoleta’s now legendary Palais de Glace...
“I assure you, friend,” Laurenz confessed in an interview with Horacio Ferrer, “the night before my debut with Pedro Maffia, I didn’t sleep a wink. Maffia was a phenomenon, the master, the undisputed idol, yes, the idol. That's why I couldn’t sleep, ‘because I was going to play with Pedro Maffia!’”
[Photo: Pedro Laurenz, right, with 'the undisputed idol' Pedro Maffia. Source: todotango.com.]
But the debut that Laurenz remembered happily so many years later took place in an atmosphere of curt silence and extreme tension between Maffia and De Caro over a labor dispute. Dr. Luis A. Sierra in his lucid testimony describes it this way: “A troubling silence among the musicians accentuated his nervousness. The moment to go up to the bandstand arrived. Maffia took his seat with his habitual offhandedness, as if there were no other bandoneonist at his side. [Contrabassist Leopoldo] “el negro” Thompson was the only one who thought to clue him in: ‘Look, kid, if you get lost just wait calmly for a few beats.’ As if Pedro Laurenz was going to get lost! The orchestra began with De Caro’s composition ‘Todo Corazon.’ Laurenz knew [former bandmember Luis] Petrucelli’s part down to the little finger without losing a millimeter of the second voice....
And to Laurenz’s stupefaction, without looking at him, in an almost imperceptible voice directed at [pianist Francisco] De Caro, Maffia said, ‘This guy plays very well, we’ve got to keep him in the orchestra.’
Thus was born the most celebrated bandoneon duo in the history of tango and also an intimate friendship between the two colossi of the keyboard.
Comments