Gustavo Beytelmann - Second Part - Interviews - Tango Music Art and Culture of Argentina

Gustavo Beytelmann - Second Part

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Meet with this pianist with whom we had evoked (First part) his life in Argentina. Exiled in France, a new lifestarts...

Photograph: Rene Robert

Gustavo Beytelmann: Me here in Paris where I spent an unquestionable time to adapt me to Parisian life, because of my political engagement. I passed three-four time years thus, without unpacking my bags, by using the facilities which I have in thefingers either to write or to play, while living sparely from the musical point of view and while passing most clearly from my time in Argentinian resistance, until it étiole. This engagement also guided my musical choices.

In parallel, I had started to make experiments with Juan Mosalini, the group Tiempo Argentino, etc... I was prepared technically for the writing. I started with touch, by knowing more or less that my final way was there. Very quickly I could concretize a series of pieces, which became Raices, with the feeling of surprised to have composed them.
Today, when I look at these pieces, apart from an emotional attachment, I feel that they artistically more deeply engage me with my Argentinas origins. I think that I quickly succeeded in creating a kind of "artistic object" which represents me rather well.

Little after the formation the Trio (Mosalini/ Beytelmann/ Caratini), I started to unpack my bags. The practice of the Trioconsolidated me in the fact that it was not an error only to dedicate a great part of my life to this type of music. I wished to advance, to widen the musical fields.
Five years ago, I finished by me acknowledging that I was a type-setter and by entirely assuming it, with the desire for not beingperceived more as a pianist who composes but as a type-setter who plays of the piano. I compose of the contemporary music and a music with strong components of the tango. It is, say, my "imaginary tango" in any case.

Between these two pillars, my life has been built for five years. I try to compose as much as possible, either for the onesor for the others, without putting distingo. For proof, on a side I had a residence as a contemporary type-setter of the town of Dijon during three years, and on another side, for three years also, Ihave been the artistic director of the department tango of the academyof Rotterdam. That gives an idea, a short cut, of what is my life today.

This life is quite different. I will be able to never again take again engagements of professional pianist whom I had front.
Today, I privilege the reports/ratios which I have with certain musicians, such as for example, Mosalini, Caratini or Angá-Diaz... That excites me, the idea to leave my den. The time of oneevening, that makes me good leave my daily newspaper, to go "to wet myshirt too". And reflexes of intelligence I miss all this stage business, insofar as I have the memory of it. It was necessary me to take retreat, it is for that that I stopped at one time given with the Trio. I did not smell myself any more in measurement tobe with the furnace and the mill. Now that five years passed, I can return "to the dropper".

The ideal for me would be to have one period of the year to go "to wet the shirt". Because the work of composition is a work ofintrospection. To follow its idea, the means should be given. I think for three months and I write in twenty days. My friends find that I go quickly. But not, that made ninety days that I think of that.

Now that I have a style, that I polish it, I can allow myself togo to listen to other musics which do not make any more diversion in my search. On the contrary, to listen to the others enriches me.In this way, I do not have any more a problem to go towards the other. I do not feel disturbed any more. In my life, the need made leave me of the things above suspicion. I acquired a great feeling of relativity.

Remarks collected by Solange Bazely on August 27, 1999

discover in our catalog two incredibles works from Gustavo Beytelmann:
Tango a la Duke
www.musicargentina.com/fr/cd-jazz/tango-a-la-duke.html
Un argentin au Louvre
www.musicargentina.com/fr/cd-auteurs-compositeurs/un-argentin-au-louvre.html