Cristina Branco (Stimme)Luís Figuereido (Klavier)Bernardo Couto (Portugiesische Gitarre)Bernardo Moreira (Kontrabass)

Cristina Branco gilt als eine der schönsten Stimmen des Fado, der portugiesischen Nationalmusik, deren heutiges Gesicht sie mitgeprägt hat. Melancholie, menschliche Leidprüfungen und die letztliche Ohnmacht des Menschen gegenüber seinem Schicksal – die bevorzugten Themen der Portugiesin gehören zur Quintessenz des traditionellen Fado. Branco ist aber auch eine der herausragenden Vertreterinnen des sogenannten ‹Neuen Fado›, der der das herkömmliche Instrumentarium um zusätzliche Instrumente wie Akkordeon, Violine und Klavier erweitert. Mit Cristina Branco ist der Fado ganz im Hier und Heute angekommen. Unbekümmert hat sie stets verkündet, dass Fado auch voller Freude sei.

Alegria

«When a memory repeatedly assails us, we often need to find the reason why. Fado Tango could be seen as being composed of memories or journeys or flashbacks.

I have an old record-player, LPs by Gardel, I have Buenos Aires and Paris and Lisbon in my heart,
I have Amália in an old photograph taken in Rio de Janeiro in 1945,
I have the Fado and the Tango, I have the terrible sadness of ‘Invitation to the Journey’ (Baudelaire said that he suffered from a horror of the domestic).
I have the guitar, the piano, the double bass… the bandoneon.In the music, fingers entwine like legs that dance long into the night. Some say the Fado was once a dance. The Fado is like the Tango, the music of those who are poor or mad, but who have large souls!I keep thinking about the red flower in Amália’s jet-black hair… the Milonga or a Bolero, or even the Tango criollo.
The partial outline of a bandoneon beside that young woman sitting on the pavement in La Boca in Buenos Aires, her large, green eyes, the smile of a pubescent Gioconda, or memories of Paris, of helpless, furtive emigrants, swathed in a sensual mystery, would that be a Fado or a Tango or a Fado Tango?It could be the voyage on one of those vast transatlantic liners crammed with people from every class and every type, it could be an old boat moored on one side or the other of the Atlantic, you could go even further and imagine that There’s more to Paris than tangos is the journey itself from Buenos Aires to Lisbon to Paris. Anything can happen en route from poverty to luxury. There’s despair, a long list of misfortunes, love stories, and, above all, there is saudade, that untranslatable word full of such large and noble feelings.
This, I believe, is the whole of me!
Once again, the music is crisscrossed by various languages and written by various wonderful writers, for whom I feel enormous and inexpressible respect, admiration and gratitude.»