Astor Piazzolla...How much has already been written and said about him!He is a man who has achieved much. He has walked his own Path, and this Path had Soul.

His music is full of suffering and love. Of sorrow, joy, disappointment and hope -- of all that, in short, which makes up our life.

And, fortunately for the performer, Piazzolla's music is free from artificiality, routine and dullness, these notorious diseases of today's music.

It is a pleasure to play Piazzolla's music. A host of images and visions rush away before our mental eye: burning sun, maddening shouts and colours of a carnival, drumbeat, dry crackle of castanets, wild emotions, feelings and passions without restraint. Yet an undefinable painful sadness pervades all of them, and also an unfulfilled longing for something inaccessible, elusive, inexpressible...

A.Piazzolla has left a huge musical heritage of about 1000 compositions, of which he and his musicians had performed almost all. In our opinion there is but one way to try to attain the forceful influence and the energy of performance which radiate from Piazzolla's concerts and studio recordings: playing this music, one has to forget who and where one is, to forget one's conventional education and the bad weather and to fly mentally away to the streets around Buenos Aires harbour, to snug Parisian cafes smelling tasty food, and then on to New York night clubs, to see before oneself, as if in reality, passionate tangueros, dancers and singers, and -- and this is the most important thing -- to commune with the rebellious soul of the man who dared to break away from the tradition, of the innovator who invented a new musical language, of the man who had experienced, during his life, complete rejection, mordant criticism, unbounded adoration and, finally, universal recognition.

The ensemble Remolino, founded in 2000, unites musicians who graduated recently from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatoire.

Although they work in various ensembles, the musicians have come together inspired by the great idea of performing music by authors who are balancing on the verge between the classical and the popular music, interwoven harmoniously with elements of ethnic music and jazz.

The unusual combination of instruments, traditionally considered incompatible (violin, bayan, piano, clarinet) makes the ensemble's sound extraordinarily festive and exotic, which is appreciated both by a connoisseur listening regularly to philharmonic concerts and by an unpretentious lover of popular music alike.

Remolino is planning to look constantly for new sources of music, to realise interesting creative ideas, to cooperate with young composers and arrangers, to edit new CD's.