TT-blog Carlos Di Sarli and his Music Hall recordings – Guest post by Jens-Ingo Brodesser

ens-Ingo Brodesser about the Music Hall recordings by Carlos Di Sarli:

After a creative break in 1948, Carlos Di Sarli made his comeback in November 1951 on the Music Hall label with a bigger orchestra and a new sound. By then, his orchestra had nearly reached its final size, and for the first time his distinctive sound was beginning to emerge. Now, the large bandoneon line-up was serving a purely rhythmical background function and the violins and the piano took centre stage playing both a rhythmical and lyrical role. Furthermore, this orchestra performed at a slower tempo, detaching itself completely from the D’Arienzo dictates of the past.

The recordings Di Sarli made in just under two years at Music Hall, until he returned to RCA Victor in April 1954 after a short period of illness, are among the tango masterpieces of all time. While at Music Hall Di Sarli created 84 tracks, both instrumental and vocal, with Oscar Serpa and the newly arrived singer Mario Pomar; some of the beautiful tangos published for the first time on this label are his own compositions such as Tangueando te quiero or Cuatro vidas, which seem perfectly tailored to the voices of his singers.

It is interesting to note that the inital releases of this series were done directly on 7” vinyl and that the label later continued to publish on the older 78-rpm format. Making Carlos Di Sarli therefore without any doubt one of the first tango artists to be published on vinyl. Some of the later CD-transfers were of a lower quality and also a lot of the tracks created during this period are very difficult to find nowadays. On top of this, most available transfers have added reverberation effects, which artificially amplify the already very spacious timbre of the original sound. The following tunes are based on new transfers from well-preserved source material. This fresh release aims to restore the authentic sound of these recordings.