Best Tango Album In The World... Ever! CD

The title of this television-advertised compilation may be arrogant, but then the tango is not a dance for the shy and retiring. Whether or not it is, as it claims, The Best Tango Album in the World, Ever!, the two-disc set, containing 30 tracks and running a little less than an hour and a half, does feature some major performers of the music, notably Carlos Gardel, renowned as the father of the tango, heard performing "Volver" and the concluding vocal version of "Mi Buenos Aires Querido," and Astor Piazzolla, who used the tango as a vehicle for composing modern classical music, heard performing "La Rayuela." Other notable performers include Carlos Garcia & His Orchestra, heard on four tracks, Sexteto Mayor, Florindo Sassone & His Traditional Orchestra, and Alfredo de Angelis & His Traditional Orchestra. (If the casual listener to whom this collection is intended recognizes the third track, "Por una Cabeza," that's because it has turned up in the film Scent of a Woman, as the music to which Al Pacino's blind character dances, as well as in the opening scene of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies.) This is not a scholarly collection, being devoid of annotations beyond the requisite song titles, artists, and songwriting credits. But it plays well, and beginning students of the tango can put it on for their practice sessions. ~ William Ruhlmann

2cds-Carlos Garcia/Jose Basso Tango Proj./Julio Sosa/H.Varel