This compactdisc acquires considerable value because it presents the compositions for solo instrument that mark Vincenzo (alias Giulio) Gualtieri's return to acoustic music. A return that takes advantage of all the experiences gained with electronic music over the last twenty years. It is a refined interactive project, refined both in the sense of research and investigation and in that of style and refinement. The anthology presents solo pieces that are close from a chronological point of view and from that of the compositional basis, with many aspects in common, especially regarding rhythm. The entire group of instruments presents solutions of notable importance and is very interesting for the constant study of sound. Gualtieri's is even a painful investigation, supported with profound participation both by the Author and by the magnificent interpreters, who are the ones who give life to the compositional project, set it in motion, compose the sound, in an incessant interactivity between the ideas and emotions of the Author and their vision of the music, of the final result... Renzo Cresti
Nils Ferlin is one of the Swedish poets whose poetry collections have been published in the largest editions. He is also one of the poets, whose poems most often have been set to music, despite they are often grave with dark motifs. He is one of the eternally living names of Swedish literature and the song treasure, a “people’s poet”.
For their third recording for label Stradivarius, the duo Singer & Fischer have chosen to devote themselves to four Hispanic-flavored works. With little original repertoire despite the opuses that various composers have written for them in recent years, transcriptions, arrangements, and other adaptations are usual in the ensemble’s work. However, not all works are easy to adapt, and the choice of pieces from among the ‘possibilities’ is often a difficult one. The transcriptions on this recording are the result of a process of reflection that goes back to the duo’s genesis. Their first attempts at De Falla or Granados took place in the 90s, a time when the youthfulness of the performers certainly contributed to the enthusiasm essential to any musical interpretation, but when a lack of experience was a brake on any idea of immortalizing their concert attempts.
Since then, the Singer & Fischer duo have taken the time to mature, and this latest recording is the result of over thirty years of playing together. Whether in terms of sound timbre, phrasing or balance, the ensemble has achieved a musical union made possible by its longevity, proof that despite all the acceleration and frenzy in today’s world, some goals take time.
Francois De Fossa: The Guitar Soldier - Samuele Provenzi
Stradivarius
CD
$16.99Mar 20, 2026
This recording is a thematic and cultural journey through the figure of François de Fossa, a nineteenth-century military musician and guitarist who distilled multiple influences through his nature as both traveller and innovator. The selection of works highlights not only the guitar's virtuosic possibilities, but also it's remarkable ability to act as a bridge between cultures and musical styles. Viennese Classicism: Through his transcriptions of Haydn and his admiration for Beethoven, de Fossa brought the guitar into dialogue with one of Europe's most refined and universal musical idioms. The Iberian Connection: His travels in Spain and his military career exposed him to Iberian melodic and rhythmic patterns that weave their way throughout his music.
It took a long time for the guitar to enter and establish itself in contemporary music. Yet the piece that marked it's entry into the 20th century was a very modern one: the Tombeau that Manuel de Falla dedicated in 1922 to Claude Debussy was pioneering at the time. The instrument had everything it needed to be 'modern': a small, but captivating chamber music sonority, a glorious past (at least in the then halfforgotten noble ancestor, the lute, whose place it took), and a technique still evolving and ready to be explored. However, despite Schonberg's use of the guitar as early as 1924 in his Serenade, mainly owing to Andres Segovia - the main architect of the instrument's renaissance in the 20th century, who long dominated the scene with his own predilections and idiosyncrasies -, the repertoire remained linguistically linked to that debut moment until the 1970s: modern, but no longer contemporary. It was then thanks to the work carried out in Darmstadt by Leo Brouwer (1939), a talented Cuban guitarist and composer, and a few other performers - among whom we should mention at least Siegfried Behrend (19331990) and Angelo Gilardino (19412022) - that the first compositions for guitar built on elements that the composers of the second half of the 20th century had already been using for decades came to the public at large: aleatorism, serialism, free atonality, and extreme timbral research. When contemporary composers finally embraced the instrument, they did so with conviction, developing it's full potential in the knowledge that it possesses the versatility necessary for the languages of our time.
D'Amario: Complete Works for Guitar Solo & Two Guitars
Brilliant Classics
CD
$11.99$14.99Save 20%Apr 18, 2025
- Coming from a family of musicians, guitarist and composer Bruno Battisti D'Amario (Rome, 1937) received his artistic training at the Conservatorio Musicale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied under Maestros Benedetto Di Ponio and Mario Gangi. - In 1960, he met Ennio Morricone, who involved him in many collaborations as lead guitarist (classical and electric) in the soundtracks of his films. He also took composition lessons from him, thus creating a solid working relationship that lasted more than 20 years. He has collaborated with composers such as Nino Rota, Armando Trovajoli, Luis Bacalov, Nicola Piovani and others. - D'Amario knows the guitar perfectly, exploring all it's timbres and colours, creating fantastic soundscapes, sophisticated harmonies and flowing melodies. - Guitarist Adriano Sebastiani is a pupil and now close friend of D'Ammario, his playing shows deep knowledge and close affection for the idiom of this wonderfully original music. Riccardo Bini joins him in the works for guitar duo.
Agua & Vinho - Sentimental moods for flute & guitar
Stradivarius
CD
$18.99May 10, 2024
The CD "Agua & Vinho Sentimentals: Moods for Flute and Guitar" offers a wide and varied anthology of pieces by different authors, from classical to contemporary, revisited by the personal sensitivity of Carolina Dello Iacono (flute) and Antonio Grande (guitar). In the intense instrumental dialogue, the publication becomes a singular musical story that explores different artistic languages, from the song by Egberto Gismonti (that gives the album’s title) to works by Ada Gentile, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Francis Poulenc, and others, between enveloping atmospheres and moments that open up unexpected sonic horizons. The protagonists of this particular listening journey, in a polyphony of ideas, voices, and creative instances, are Carolina Dello Iacono and Antonio Grande, musicians with great experience and extensive artistic activity.
Domeniconi: Sinbad, a Fairy Tale for Solo Guitar / Celil Refik Kaya
Naxos
CD
$19.99Mar 24, 2023
Renowned both as a guitarist and a composer, Carlo Domeniconi has written over 150 compositions, combining Eastern and Western elements in striking and individual ways. Sinbad, a Fairy Tale for Solo Guitar is a perfect example of his imaginative style and is one of the most remarkable works in the entire solo guitar repertoire, evoking the panoramic journey of the sailor and adventurer known from The Arabian Nights. The piece draws on diverse sources including Oriental-Persian scales, Arabic oud ornaments and extended techniques to chart, in three cycles, the Middle Eastern atmosphere through which Sinbad travels.
Albert Harris (1916-2005) was an English musician who worked in Hollywood for most of his life as an orchestrator, arranger and composer for several of the big film Studios and for such pop icons as Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack and Cher. He was born in London and studied piano from age 6, becoming also a self-taught guitarist. His knowledge of the guitar enabled him in later years to compose pieces specifically for it (his Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel was recorded by Andres Segovia). In the mid-1930s he began to make a name for himself as a session musician in London where he featured on many recordings, most notably as session guitarist with the Lew Stone band, his delicate but swinging improvisations enhancing many of Stone's records during 1934/35. Harris came to New York in 1938 and started playing piano in big bands across the US then began studying at the NYU College of Music, where he earned a doctorate in 1944. He finished the PhD remotely, having moved to Los Angeles in 1942, where he studied composition with Mary Carr Moore and Eugen Zador and conducting with Richard Lert. He served as professor of orchestration at UCLA and was Assistant Musical Director for broadcaster NBC from 1946 to 1949. Written in three movements, the Sonatina is one of the most emblematic pieces in Harris's catalogue. Popular elements from his adopted land, linked to graceful writing attentive to melodic construction, make this guitar composition one of his best. The Suite was composed in 1972 and features seven dance movements with modern and elaborate harmonies similar to those of jazz, especially in the Waltz. Homage to Unamuno was written in 1972 in tribute to it's dedicatee, a symbol of Spanish liberal thought and a high representative of Spanish literature. The short Intermezzo was included in a collection of compositions that appeared in the Classic Guitar Society's periodical magazine, Guitar News, in 1952, and despite it's brevity the elegance of Harris's language remains. Perhaps the composer's best-known guitar composition, together with the Sonatina, the Variations & Fugue on a Theme of Handel are dedicated to the great guitarist Andres Segovia, who was the first to record it. The work is highly influenced by the Spanish guitarist's style. In it Handel's theme is treated with highly original variations that rapidly transform the material and it's meaning. The three short Fantastic Dances, commissioned by the Guitar Foundation of America, were written in 1988, and although written in the same tuning they each present clearly different material and characters. The element that binds them is their brilliance and dynamism. They were composed as a compulsory piece for an international competition held that year. Other information: - Recording completed in December 2023 in Rome, Italy - Booklet in English contains liner notes by the guitarist on the composer and the works, and a profile of the artist - Michele di Filippo plays a guitar by Antonino Scandurra - Albert Harris (1916-2005) was an English musician who worked most of his life in Hollywood as an orchestrator, arranger and composer for several of the big Film Studios and for such pop icons as Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack and Cher. - Harris was born in London and studied piano from age 6 and was also a self-taught guitarist; his knowledge of this instrument enabled him in later years to compose pieces specifically for guitar, his Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel were recorded by Andres Segovia. In America he won the National Composer's Award for his "Concerto de California" scored for guitar and String Quartet. Among those nominating Harris was Aaron Copland with whom Harris shares a harmonic language that, in the words of Ned Rorem, "sounds like the great outdoors". - This new recording presents the complete works for guitar solo, consisting of a Suite, a Sonatina, Variations & Fugue on a theme of Handel and 3 Fantastic Dances. - Played with commitment and feeling for the idiom by Michele Di Filippo.
Schubert & Mendelssohn: Lieder Arranged for Guitar Duo / Copiello, Tedesco
Stradivarius
CD
$18.99Jan 05, 2024
It is indeed a pleasure to find myself writing the introduction to this record programme, the result of an extended gestation spanning more than a decade of my musical research. The common thread of this project is the search for a personal reflection in the mirror of the anthropomorphic musical instrument par excellence, the human voice. Finding a parallelism between vocal cords and guitar strings, by arranging originally vocal works. This primordial and initiatory sound in the communication between living beings is here understood as a medium that goes under the musical epidermis, towards a more anthropologically horizontal pulsation and resonance. Over the centuries, from the Gregorian chant onwards, we have witnessed a fervent “musically oriented” approach to sound and metrics, in favour of instrumental performance and dance. However, in my experience, the most effective musical expressions have always been characterised by a communicativeness that goes beyond the instrument, revealing an expressive flow that, unmediated, takes us back to the apparent naturalness of the vocal expression. Similarly, from the opposite perspective, it was enlightening for me to listen to Carmelo Bene’s recordings and discover that Valerio Binasco studied The Tempest using the metronome, to get in contact with “the musicality of speech”. The intention to interbreed with the human voice has been and still is for me an inexhaustible source of inspiration. This research, which can be extended to compositions of all epochs, is presented here in a compact version, through the arrangement of works by two authors belonging to German Romanticism.
Guitarist Daniel Lippel's "Adjacence" features a collection of new chamber works for guitar, including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Charles Wuorinen, Tania Leon, Nico Muhly, Mario Davidovsky, Ken Ueno, Peter Gilbert, Tonia Ko, Bernadette Speech, Peter Adriaansz, and Sidney Boquiren. The works occupy a broad range of aesthetics, from modernist to minimalist, incorporating improvisation and microtonality, and featuring a variety of instrumentations with Lippel's colleagues in the International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, as well as other active performers in the New York contemporary music scene.
This CD marks the first commercial release of recordings by the great Czech guitarist, Petra Polackova. Producer David Starobin writes: "A few years ago I came upon some stunning video of the guitarist Petra Polackova. Since then I've avidly followed her work, and have marveled at her passionate performances of repertoire spanning the centuries. What a pleasure it was to finally meet in 2024 for these recording sessions in New York City. Petra is a musician after my own heart - a deep player, who seduces the listener into the dreamworld of that consummate Romantic, J. K. Mertz. Hearing Mertz's music as he performed it, on a "Romantic Guitar" with added basses, gives these small gems nearly symphonic range, without sacrificing their exquisite intimacy."
Guitarist from Rome, Marina Tomei is among all the most active young Italian guitarists in the world music scene. She began to study guitar with Bruno Battisti D'Amario, the historical guitarist of Ennio Morricone. She continued her academic studies in Florence, as a fellow at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, where she studied with Maestro Francesco Cuoghi. She received her degree in guitar under the guidance of Maestro Arturo Tallini at the Conservatory of Music Santa Cecilia in Rome. She worked in Masterclass with Dusan Bogdanovich, Magnus Andersson and Ricardo Gallen among others. She was selected to attend the Aspen Music Festival and School, under the instrumental direction of Sharon Isbin, and the famous Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Oscar Ghiglia. The CD offers, with personal lyrical strength and colorful language, a fascinating musical journey into the compositions of twentieth-century authors.
The CD entitled Contrappassi sees the two protagonists, Leonardo Zunica on piano and Leandro Lo Bianco on electric guitar, engaged in compositions by contemporary authors, with pieces that find poetic-musical inspiration in the fascinating and complex world of Dante. A program with broad musical visions that transport you to an unexpected soundscape, with the two performers who give life to moments and atmospheres of surprising suggestion. The CD's lineup opens with the Sonata n. 1 "DANTE SONATA" for piano by the Danish composer Poul Ruders (born in 1949), a work divided into two distinct movements with contrasting characteristics. The roots of the Dante Sonata are not only linked to Dante's canticles but also to the author's admiration for Liszt's Sonata in B minor. Dante, therefore, seen through the eyes of Liszt. The piece by Ruders is followed by MALEBOLGE for electric guitar and piano TRE CANZONI DI FRANCESCO LANDINI for piano with electric guitar ad libitum by the Italian composer Gabrio Taglietti, a journey that leads to the VIII circle of Hell. Taglietti wanted to alternate his three pits with transcriptions for piano, and in the last case for piano and electric guitar, of as many ballads by Francesco Landini, a composer of the fourteenth century, the genre in which Landini excelled. This singular listening journey ends with a piece by Leandro Lo Bianco, here in the role of composer as well as performer: THREE IMPROVISATIONS ON R. RAUSCHENBERG "DANTE'S INFERNO" for solo electric guitar and electronic devices.
David Starobin's recordings of 19th century music on Viennese guitars have been hailed as path-breaking, including his recent Matiegka sonatas disc, (BRIDGE 9567). Donald Rosenberg, in Gramophone wrote: "These works unfold with a spectrum of creative possibility, especially in Starobin's eloquent hands. The guitarist brings refinement to every turn of phrase, whether the music is marching, dancing or crying. This recording is a swansong to savor." In honor of the 200th birth year of Giulio Regondi, Victorian composer, guitarist, and concertinist, Starobin's new Regondi release combines previously unissued recordings, alongside re-mastered performances from Starobin's back catalog. In addition to Regondi's most well known works (Nocturne Reverie, op. 19 and Introduction et Caprice, op. 23), Starobin includes four transcriptions from Regondi's concertina etudes, guitar etudes nos. 2 and 10, and Regondi's Fetes Villageoise, op. 20 and Air Varie, No. 1, op. 21.
This album brings together things that at first glance don’t appear to have much in common: works by the two artists Johann Sebastian Bach and Agustín Barrios, who lived in distinctly different cultures many generations apart. However, the intriguing aspect of combining two so very disparate worlds is that shared elements only become apparent when they are placed side by side. Born in Uruguay, guitarist and composer José Fernández Bardesio began playing the guitar as an 11-year-old. He gave his first solo recital when he was only 15. He won first prizes at many renowned national and international competitions, including the Alirio Díaz (Gold Medal, Caracas), the Andrés Segovia Competition (Granada), the OAS Special Prize, and the Infanta Cristina Competition in Madrid.
Since making his debut in the United States and Spain in 1984, Bardesio has performed as a recitalist and soloist with orchestras in the Americas, Asia and Europe. He regularly appears at international guitar festivals and performs at important music centers including the Royal Festival Hall (London), Hall of the Americas (Washington, D.C.) and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York). He is featured in recordings with broadcasters in Venezuela, the US, Spain and France and his discography in the US, Spain and Germany bears testimony to his artistry. His albums are released by Hänssler Classic and his compositions with Hofmeister Musikverlag in Leipzig.
REVIEWS:
If one had to identify an individual outstanding gem from this recording, which showcased the overall virtues of Fernández Bardesio, it would be the Mazurka Apasionada by Barrios. He composed in various styles, and the Romantic European style is strongly evidenced here; both tracks 1 and 13 have that common root. The influence of Chopin can also readily be recognized in this music. One detects a particularly strong empathy for the music in this rendition.
Fernández Bardesio is a master guitarist who demonstrates high levels of technical command over the instrument, and similar qualities of musicianship, in this recording. In comparing his renditions of Barrios and Bach, one gets the feeling that he is more at home with the former. That feeling is heightened when again listening to Bream play the Bach Lute Suites. There will always be disagreement about the ‘correct’ way to play this music, compounded by one’s overall preference for revered renditions of the past.
The instrument used on this occasion is not identified. However based on the accompanying photographs, and his past employment of an instrument by Daniel Friederich, it would be safe to assume that this same instrument was played here. This recording embodies an enjoyable programme, and fine guitar playing. The juxtaposition of Bach and Barrios’ while thematically interesting, inadvertently displays musicianship more at home with the latter.
Segovia is Carlotta Dalia's debut album on Berlin Classics - as the first female guitarist in the label's artist roster. The programme is recorded with Carlotta Dalia playing the 1939 Hermann Hauser I guitar, that was originally built for Andres Segovia. There are only two Hermann Hauser guitars existing, one is currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The album contains works for solo guitar by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Pedrell, Haug, Ibert, Torroba, Turina and Segovia himself, plus one new commissioned piece by Enrico Melozzi, written especially for Carlotta Dalia.
Britten & Facchinetti: Laura Plays Laura / Mondiello
Stradivarius
CD
$18.99Oct 07, 2022
This release offers a vivid picture of the diverse and varied spirits that characterized the twentieth century, as told in music. A milestone of twentieth century guitar literature, Nocturnal after John Dowland op. 70 (1963) by Benjamin Britten, joins hands here with two pieces, Fantasia per Laura (2010) and Suite per chitarra (2016), by Giancarlo Facchinetti (1936-2017), a composer from Brescia who ‘with his biographical and artistic story, sums up the fragmented and contradictory course of twentieth century music’.
Alongside the mainland represented by the works of Britten and Facchinetti, the former unanimously historicized and the latter undoubtedly on the way to being so, five well-known songs belonging to the tradition of pop music have been inserted, like a small and intricate archipelago. Seemingly isolated, far removed from the seriousness of the classical context just described, yet dense with their own poetic originality, thanks in part to the inventiveness of the musicians who have succeeded so well in making guitar arrangements of them, the songs surface like water lilies among the leaden atmospheres elicited by Britten and Facchinetti, like an invitation to free our mind and soul from the meditative introversion characterizing the Nocturnal, as well as the Fantasia and Suite. The pieces in our program alternate as if wishing to lead the listener through the meanderings of an emotional journey that culminates in the concluding Nocturnal.
Landmark works of Baroque chamber music given a 21st-century twist. The extent to which George Frederic Handel's flute sonatas 'belong' on the flute is an open question. Some sonatas were composed with the violin in mind, and then arranged by Handel's London publisher, John Walsh, ever alert to a commercial opportunity. Others were probably conceived for recorder and basso continuo, and then transposed for the different register of the flute. Most of them were written around the 1720s, but some date from rather earlier, so far as we can tell. Even more than his contemporaries such as Bach, Handel was an assiduous reuser and recycler of his own material, and thus the notion of early and late style in this music, and an evolution between them, becomes somewhat moot. Not entirely, however, for there is a discernible movement away from Italian and towards French models of rhetoric in the sonatas, just as the oratorios develop an increased richness of harmony and economy of gesture during the decades of Handel's English period. To accompany this new recording, the flautist Lorenzo d'Antò has supplied invaluable chapter and verse for each sonata in his booklet essay. He also brings them alive in his partnership with the guitarist Michele Di Filippo, with the aim of rediscovering 'these antique masterpieces, and observing them from a new and modern perspective.' Thus the basso continuo lines, usually encountered on a harpsichord or combination of cello, lute and keyboard, have been mapped on to the guitar. This is a practice with many honourable precedents, dating back to Handel's own time. Lorenzo d'Antò graduated from the conservatoire in Rome in 2017. While at a relatively early stage in his career, he is already principal flute of the orchestra of the Arena di Verona. He has also performed as a concerto soloist and recitalist in festivals and venues across Italy and Switzerland. He is partnered here by Michele di Filippo, a guitarist born in 1994 who is also active as a composer.
Eugenio Della Chiara Plays Paganini, Galante, Garcia, Torroba, Cassado & Tedesco
Stradivarius
Vinyl
$32.99Jan 06, 2023
Eugenio Della Chiara got his degree in classical guitar with full marks and honors at the Conservatoire of Pesaro. Among the Maestros he studied with three are Beppe Ficara, Andrea Dieci and Oscar Ghiglia, whose course he attended at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena. In parallel with his musical studies, he completed his education in humanities at the Università Cattolica of Milan, obtaining a degree in Modern Philology. He has performed in Japan, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Eire. In Italy he has performed solo recitals for some of the main musical institutions of the country. Between 2018 and 2021, he recorded three albums as a soloist for DECCA. He collaborates with violinist Piercarlo Sacco, guitarist Andrea Dieci, pianist Alberto Chines, messo-soprano Teresa Iervolino, tenors Juan Francisco Gatell and Mert Süngü. Together with Alessio Boni, he has staged ''Tutto il resto è silenzio'', a reading from Shakespeare's Hamlet accompanied seventeenth-century English music. More than twenty solo and chamber works were dedicated to him by composers like Carlo Galante, Orazio Sciortino, Roberto Tagliacollo, Davide Anzaghi and others. He has several world première recordings at his credit, among which the Sonata composed by Luciano Chailly in 1976 stand out. He has been teaching in the Italian Stte Conservatoires since 2017. He plays guitars by Domingo Esteso (Madrid 1935) and Lucio Carbone (Milano 2021)
