Classical Guitar
665 products
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SaleLe Tombeau De Claude Debussy / Tomer Lev, Buchmann-Mehta Symphony Orchestra
Naxos · Jan 2021CD$19.99$13.99 -
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Villa-Lobos: Concertos for Guitar & Harmonica & Other Works / Guerrero, Sao Paulo Symphony
Naxos · Nov 2019CD$19.99 -
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Ginastera: One Hundred / Jimenez, Shaham, Kondonassis, Vieaux, Oberlin Orchestra
Oberlin Music · Oct 2016CD$16.99
Laureate Series - Guitar / Srdjan Bulat
This selection ranges from the romanticism of Francisco Tárrega, the Spanish impressionism of Albéniz’s Mallorca and the neo-romanticism of the contemporary Croatian composer, Stjepan Šulek, to Rodrigo’s masterly evocation of the gardens of the Alhambra Palace in Granada and Britten’s revolutionary Nocturnal after John Dowland. Croatian guitarist Srdjan Bulat has won numerous prestigious awards, and was winner of the Certamen Tárrega 2011 which included a special award for his performance of the work of Francisco Tárrega.
Cancion de Cuna - Guitar Music from Cuba / Tamayo
"A fascinating insight into the influences on Cuban guitar music...Marco Tamayo proves himself to be a fine guitarist. His playing is rather understated which seems to assist the mood of the music, with more subtlety than flamboyance, more sensitivity than grit; unaffected rather than pretentious. Tamayo leaves the listener with a real sense of 'a soloist at one' with this repertoire from his homeland... moody, reflective and accessible... No problem with the sound quality here and the release has interesting and informative annotation. An exceedingly well performed release from Naxos." -- Michael Cookson, musicweb.uk.net
The Legend of Alirio Diaz, Vol. 3
For classical guitar lovers IDIS presents to the audience an album that collects some Fifties and Sixties recordings performed by Alirio Diaz; among them Antonio Lauro Concert for guitar and orchestra with also four small rarities. Four popular Venezuelan songs arranged for two guitars and recorded with a false name in 1962 with the great South American guitarist Rodrigo Riera. During these times Diaz was one of the favorite guitarists of Andrés Segovia and he did not want to get the Master upset recording popular music; a kind of music not loved or much appreciated by Mr. Segovia. This album is a really do not miss release.
Hoffmeister & Beethoven: Duos for Violin & Cello
Laureate Series - Guitar / Kyuhee Park
The brilliant young guitarist Kyuhee Park, winner of the 2010 Agustín Barrios and 2012 Alhambra International Guitar competitions, has crafted a recital that focuses on a sequence of sonatas and a quartet of evocative character pieces. The three Scarlatti sonatas exude dance, lyricism and virtuosity respectively, whilst Anton Diabelli’s engaging Sonata in A, heard in Julian Bream’s arrangement, is one of the relatively few extended guitar works of the Classical period. Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina is both elegant and complex. After Malats’ popular encore piece Serenata Española and Barrios’ sublime Un Sueño en la Floresta and Chopin-inspired Vals, the recital concludes with Lopez’s richly varied Impresiones y paisajes, inspired by Lorca’s first book.
Le Tombeau De Claude Debussy / Tomer Lev, Buchmann-Mehta Symphony Orchestra
Le Tombeau de Debussy: a fascinating compilation of works composed in 1920 by Bartók, Dukas, Falla, Goossens, Malipiero, Roussel, Satie and Schmitt as a tribute to Debussy who had died 2 years earlier, together with Ravel’s Duo for Violin and Cello and Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, each a memorial to Debussy in its own right.
REVIEWS:
The sound quality is ideal. It allows listeners to appreciate the subtle sonorities of each piece...[this is] an often beautiful and always interesting piece of musical archaeology.
This remarkable disc not only presents Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy but includes three spin-offs from that project...Debussy died on 25 March 1918. Two years later, Henry Prunières (1886-1942), the director of the French journal La Revue Musicale, commissioned a joint memorial volume for the composer. He approached the great and good of European music, and asked for a specially written contribution. Ten composers responded with short works that balanced a celebration of Debussy’s musical achievement with each contributor’s individual style. A glance at the track listings shows a wide range of age and aesthetic. Paul Dukas, 55 years old, was the senior contributor, whilst the Englishman Eugene Goossens, at 27, was the youngest. Most of them had made their names before the Great War; some were just about to become successful.
[Dukas'] La Plainte, au loin, du Faune (Lament from afar, of the faun) evokes Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. The music is dense and numinous, with some foretelling of his pupil Olivier Messiaen’s “harmonic complexities”. Here, the Faun truly does lament his creator, Debussy.
Manuel de Falla’s elegiac Homenaje was written for guitar. A lugubrious piece, it uses the habanera rhythm, and includes nods towards Debussy’s Iberia. It is a masterclass in subtle chords, scale, arpeggios and dynamics for this instrument. The composer subsequently made versions for piano solo and orchestra.
The longest work in Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy is Florent Schmitt’s À la mémoire de Claude Debussy: Et Pan, au fond des blés lunaires, s’accouda. The latter part of the title translates as “Pan leaned on his elbows deep in the Lunar wheat fields”. There is stylistic variety here; Romanticism, post-Wagnerism and Impressionism contribute to this memorable piece.
Gian Francesco Malipiero left Italy in 1913 to work in Paris. He was fascinated by Debussy’s music. His Hommage à Claude Debussy: Lento echoes the dead composer’s La Cathédrale engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral) with its archaic Gregorian chant “giving the impression of sovereign majesty and greatness”.
This is followed by the most modern-sounding piece in the collection. The Fragment from Symphonies of Wind Instruments is less than a 1½ minute long. This is a piano reduction of that work’s final choral. Naxos have included a complete recording of the orchestral version (23 woodwinds) [which] was derided at its premiere in London on 10 June 1921. We have learned a lot since then!
The only Englishman represented in the project was Eugene Goossens. His Hommage à Debussy, Op. 28 combines two sections: a dissonant Bergian prelude followed by a short impressionistic postlude. It is one of the loveliest pieces on this CD. Béla Bartók’s Sostenuto, rubato features a unison melody supported by shimmering chords which balances impressionism with an indigenous cradle song.
One of the recurring features of Claude Debussy’s music are references to Greek mythology. Albert Roussel’s L’accueil des muses (The Muses’ Welcome) is designed as a musical ascent of Mount Parnassus, the seat of Euterpe and her fellow goddesses. Much of this piece reflects grief, but towards the close there is a definite sense of optimism.
Compared to so much of his music, [Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello] is an acerbic piece that reflects his reaction to the First World War. The first movement was included in the memorial volume. The others were added in 1922. The liner notes explain: “the ultra-transparent writing for two melodic instruments corresponds with Debussy’s last works, and especially his late sonatas for violin and cello, where he gave up his trademark impressionistic multicoloured spectrum in favour of concentrated neo-Classical clarity.” The entire work is given a splendid performance here.
The pianist Tomer Lev was the driving force behind this realisation of Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy. He has provided exceptionally detailed liner notes: not only context but brief overviews of the composers, and an informed discussion about each piece. The usual biographies of the performers are included. The text is presented in English and French. Finally, it should be noted that Tomer Lev has rearranged the order of the pieces to that of the original score. In an essay for The Gramophone (December 2020), he wrote: “Le Tombeau is, to all practical purposes, well-nigh unperformable. Having not been given any precise criteria to write to, the composers had let their imaginations run free, and composed for a dizzying variety of instrumentations.” What has resulted from Lev’s realisation is an often beautiful and always interesting piece of musical archaeology. For me, the obvious diversity becomes a major strength rather than a dilemma.
-- MusicWeb International (John France)
Koshkin: 24 Preludes & Fugues For Solo Guitar, Vol. 1 / Selyutina

Moscow-born Nikita Koshkin won international fame for his 1980 score The Prince’s Toys and has since established himself as one of the greatest creative composers for the contemporary guitar. His 24 Preludes and Fugues for Solo Guitar, of which this is the first volume, is a compendium of musical styles, colors and effects. It is both a virtuosic tour de force and an expressively complex undertaking that demands unremitting technical command and absolute interpretative clarity from the performer. Asya Selyutina represents the new generation of the Russian classical guitarists. She appears regularly as a soloist, in chamber music ensembles, with orchestras and as a juror at prestigious competitions.
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REVIEW:
You enjoy the guitar, you want to hear something new, but not some off-the-wall, out-there experiment in how much abuse a guitar string (or the guitar itself) can take (attention-getting but not usually pleasant listening). Nor are you looking for yet another go at Recuerdos de la Alhambra or Asturias. What do you do? Well, I suggest you look no further than this extraordinary recital from Russian guitarist Asya Selyutina, performing a set of pieces that you’ve probably never heard of–it’s a world-premiere recording–but that I promise you will play over and over, in the background, the foreground, and whenever you just want to hear guitar music (and playing) that’s always engaging, never harsh, that’s clever, not cute, that’s expertly crafted and both easy on the ear and stimulating to the musical mind.
Bach’s monumental tribute to tonality, the Well-Tempered Clavier, inspired numerous imitations and re-imaginings, among the most notable and perhaps the closest to the master’s in ingenuity and pure keyboard craft, is Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes & Fugues–and although not nearly as extensive or complex in invention and development, fellow Russian Nikita Koshkin’s creations for guitar are equally varied, while stylistically sophisticated, and–absolutely essential–unfailingly idiomatic to the guitar, comfortably inhabiting the instrument’s (non-gimmicky) expressive realm yet consistently challenging the player’s virtuosic technique.
And the Moscow-based guitarist Asya Selyutina is a superb soloist, displaying an enviably smooth legato while delineating contrapuntal lines with uncanny, and uncommon, clarity. She seems to relish the rare moments of “special effects” (rapping on the guitar body; harmonics), and charges into rapid passages without inhibition. She’s not only a renowned teacher in her home city, but also has a successful performing career mostly in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East (she even created the painting featured on the disc cover). Perhaps following this project, Selyutina will be deservedly better-known around the world.
Oh, and never heard of Nikita Koshkin, you say? The 64-year-old composer is well-known to guitar fans for his suite The Prince’s Toys and Usher-Waltz (after Edgar Allan Poe) from the 1980s; he’s an accomplished guitarist himself, which explains his master’s grasp of what’s possible in creating these terrific pieces; his artistic inventor’s mind takes care of the rest, making it all interesting and musically satisfying. And we can happily look forward to another 12 preludes and fugues in Volume 2. Don’t miss this.
– ClassicsToday (David Vernier)
Villa-Lobos: Concertos for Guitar & Harmonica & Other Works / Guerrero, Sao Paulo Symphony
The concertos and chamber works on this album show Villa-Lobos’s unceasing enthusiasm for new colors and sonorities in his music. The Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra was his last work for the instrument and written for Segovia. A cornerstone of the repertoire, it contains soaring melodies and rhythmic vitality couched in virtuosic writing. Exploring the instrument’s full harmonic and chromatic possibilities, the Concerto for Harmonica is also deftly orchestrated. New and daring sonic combinations are to be heard in the two chamber works demonstrating the composer’s extraordinary gift for seductive lyricism.
REVIEW:
The more you listen to Villa-Lobos, the more it seems as though he had a giant block of characteristic music that allowed him to cut off chunks of different shapes and sizes that he called “Guitar Concerto”, “Harmonica Concerto”, “Sexteto Místico”, etc. It’s not that it all sounds the same–it’s just so much the product of a single, unique personality. This splendid program consists of chunks featuring unusual instruments, or combinations of instruments. The best known work here is the Guitar Concerto, an almost impossible piece as regards balance of forces that’s marvelously played by Manuel Barrueco. The problems of audibility are easily solved on recordings, as here, by placing the soloist well out in front of the orchestra, but I’m happy to report that performance noises are still minimal.
The Harmonica Concerto is a rarity, and sounds atrociously difficult to perform. If you don’t know the instrument well, you would never imagine its wide range of pitch and expression, and surprisingly pleasant basic timbre. José Staneck must have lips of steel just to get through the piece, but he does much more than that, offering moments of real sensitivity and grace. The Sexteto Místico is a brief work in one movement scored for–get this–flute, oboe, alto saxophone, guitar, harp, and celesta. There’s nothing like it anywhere else, and the sheer sound of it is so captivating that it almost doesn’t matter what notes the musicians are playing. Fortunately, it seems that they offer the right ones.
The most “normal” piece here is the Quinteto Instrumental for flute, harp, and string trio, a substantial work in three movements as long as any of the concertos (about 17 minutes). Villa-Lobos revels in the music’s exotic sounds and luscious textures, and you will too. The uniformly first-rate performances by members of the São Paulo Symphony under the vital and sensitive direction of Giancarlo Guerrero are excellently engineered, making the whole disc a joy from start to finish–a true voyage of discovery and delight.
– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)
Johannes Moller - 2010 Winner Guitar Foundation Of America Competition
The musical selection on this disc is a fascinating compound of romanticism, modernism and the expressive sensibilities of contemporary composers, including Swedish guitarist Johannes Möller himself. He has captivated audiences throughout the world with charismatic and soulful performances, achieving ‘miracles with his lucid, spacious playing’ (London Evening Standard). His ability to communicate a musical message to listeners of any cultural background, age or level of musical experience has brought him an international career and numerous prestigious prizes.
Ginastera: One Hundred / Jimenez, Shaham, Kondonassis, Vieaux, Oberlin Orchestra
Legendary Treasures - Segovia And His Contemporaries Vol 11
A survey of early 20th century classical guitar artists from South America. Most are first time releases since they were first issued on 78 rpm. Featured artists include Andres Segovia, Nelly Ezcaray, Maria Luisa Anido, Agustin Barrios, Julio Martinez Oyanguren, Lalyta Almiron, Abel Carlevaro, Miguel Llobet, Maria Angelica Funes, and Ramon Ayestaran: guitars.