Denis Plante and Stéphane Tétreault launch Stradivatango

For musicians Denis Plante and Stéphane Tétreault the new album, We started them is the logical continuation of this musical complicity which spans several years.

Bandoneonist Denis Plante and cellist Stéphane Tétreault met for the first time in 2018 around an artistic project presented as part of the Classica Festival. It clicked as they saysays the bandoneonist from Quebec. What followed was a concert tour and a first collaboration on record with Suite Tango published in 2022. Since Friday, we can hear new compositions for bandoneon and cello for tango on the album Stradivatango under the classic ATMA label.

The virtuosity of Stéphane Tétreault

The new project was born from this long collaboration, explains musician and composer Denis Plante. I continued to write new pieces that showcased his virtuosity, because he is a musician of truly exceptional caliber. He is an international soloist, a child cello prodigyunderlines the musician about Stéphane Tétreault. As far as I’m concerned, he’s really a musician with a romantic soul. This is also the ingredient needed to play tango, he maintains, since it is music that appeals to feelings.

It takes a musician […] capable of tapping into something that is perhaps more instinctive than technical. Who has the kind of sense of romanticism, great impulses, emotions and the ability to be able to transmit it through a musical instrument.

Denis Plante and the love of the bandoneon

The recording took place at Domaine Forget last winter under the direction of Anne-Marie Sylvestre, a long-time collaborator. Sradivatangawhich is the contraction of Stradivarius and tango, offers compositions by Denis Plante as well as works by composers, including those of the Argentinian bandoneon master Astor Piazzolla. This disc is almost a disc of ancient instruments since Stéphane’s cello is several hundred years old and my own instrument, the bandoneon, is also a hundred years old, it is now an antiquementions the musician and composer.

Denis Plante, who learned to play self-taught, is one of the essential bandoneon musicians in Canada. Spiritual son of Astor Piazzolla, he enriched the bandoneon repertoire with around a hundred works, capturing the essential impulse of tango. It is a very flexible instrument. Its soufflé is very flexible, he says to explain his love of the instrument. But it is above all its five-octave, completely chromatic keyboard that really allows you to do things that are impossible to do on any other instrument.he adds.

I wanted to develop my own vision of what we could do with this instrument. Not always interpreting other people’s music. […] I love playing tangos, but I consider that as a Quebecer, I had to bring something different.

The musical complicity between Denis Plante and Stéphane Tétreault is palpable. Even though the cello is not traditionally associated with the tango, the musical marriage works. Tétreault’s Stradivarius is not muffled by the bandoneon. The people who listen to the album will actually be in my shoesexplains Plante. We created a stereo image that corresponds to my perception. […] We hear exactly what I hear when I play this music.

Stradivatango by Denis Plante and Stéphane Tétreault is available since Friday under the ATMA classic label.