Classical Guitar
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Rodrigo: Concierto De Aranjuez, Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre / Ramirez
Signum Classics · Jan 2011CD$19.99 -
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Music for Flute & Guitar / Mesirca, Ruggieri
Among the most extensive works here is the cycle of Cantos Desiertos (1996) composed for flute and guitar by Terry Riley. The cycle was later incorporated within The Book of Abbeyzoud, an album with a character suspended between the Biblical, the mystical and the exotic. Francesco en Paraiso is a tender memorial to the countertenor Frank Royon Le Mée (1952-1993). The cycle continues with an Indian melody, and a melancholy lament before ending with a sultry Tango Ladeado (Tango Off-Centre). Hardly less substantial is Muse of Fire (1990) by George Rochberg, written in the shadow of the Gulf War: hence the sudden stops and starts, the military evocations, the funeral marches, the moments of dream-like lyricism and the rhapsodic soliloquies. Ora pro nobis (1991) is based on the slow movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto: a plea for release at a deeply troubled time. Bateau is a song from the 2003 album Ceramic Dog by Marco Ribot, who works mostly with jazz and post-rock musicians: this is the work’s first performance on classical guitar, and Alberto Mesirca brings out the delicate textures that evoke light shimmering on water. Of similar aquatic origins, Fish Tale is a ‘watercolor for flute and guitar’ by Osvaldo Golijov: ‘I wanted everything to be beautiful,’ said the composer, ‘even at the expense of some sense.’ This unique compilation concludes with shorter solo pieces alternating between flute and guitar, taking in the satisfyingly intricate textures of Crawford Seeger and Wuorinen at each end of American modernism, as well as a touching elegy by Mark Delpriora in memory of a student of his, Basil Keiser. This is the third solo album on Brilliant Classics by the guitarist Alberto Mesirca after his collections of music by Regondi and Sanz.
Fanous & Uitti: Negoum
A Tribute to Teresa de Rogatis / Milani
Born in Naples in 1893, Teresa de Rogatis was a child prodigy who gave her first recital at the age of seven. She studied piano, composition, counterpoint, harmony, conducting and voice at the Conservatorio San Pietro in Naples. While in Egypt on a concert tour, she met and soon married a Swiss man of means living in Cairo, Paolo Feninger. Settling there in the 1920s, Rogatis helped to found the National Conservatory of Egypt, where she also taught piano and guitar for over 40 years. Her husband’s death prompted her retirement in 1963 back to Naples, where she lived quietly until her death in 1979. Her career as a teacher allowed little time for composition, but de Rogatis took a selfless attitude to her own work. ‘If teaching hundreds of young people about the poetry and beauty of music, instead of composing works and symphonies, means giving one’s life up, then that’s what I’ve done. But if some of these young people, who are now adults, can understand a Beethoven symphony or sonata and find in it solace and a guide for their own lives, then I will live in their memories just as I would have done in my works, and my life will have been equally useful.’ Her relatively slender output – 60 acknowledged works – is dominated by piano music, but de Rogatis also wrote instrumental songs and dances for the guitar, and a four-movement Sonatina of no less ready melodic appeal, all presented here by her modern-day counterpart, the Italian guitarist Cinzia Milani. In a personal introduction to the scholarly booklet note, Milani observes how de Rogatis ‘reconciled brilliant virtuoso flair with an elegantly feminine touch, even when the overall tone is jocular or ironic.’ Milani’s decision to record this music on a distinctly modern instrument is part of ‘an imaginary dialogue between different periods and the changes they heralded: like glancing backwards while walking towards the future.’
American Classics - Riley: Cantos Desiertos / Hawley, McFadden

Alexandra Hawley and Jeffrey McFadden offer a wonderfully eclectic program for flute and guitar. If you haven't heard this combination of instruments before, on the evidence presented here you'll very likely agree that it's a most musically rewarding pairing. The flute's smooth timbre ideally complements the guitar's non-legato and softly percussive tone quality--aspects put to good use in Robert Beaser's Mountain Songs, where McFadden's rustic, folksy picking and strumming is tempered by Hawley's serenely floating melodies. Joan Tower's quasi-impressionistic Snow Dreams initially conjures up idyllic, pastoral images before the composer's spiky harmonic style slightly sharpens the music's edges. Likewise, Lowell Liebermann's Sonata for Flute opens with a blissfully ruminative Nocturne, an atmosphere that dissipates immediately with the start of the nervously dancing Allegro finale.
Based on Mexican folk tunes, Terry Riley's Cantos Desiertos features delightfully stirring dances rendered with the aid of percussion. Finally, Peter Schickele's Windows offers a neo-Renaissance Pavane and a songful Cantilena before charging into an all-out strum-fest for the closing Refrain. Hawley and McFadden play beautifully, sounding convincingly at home in all of the varying styles and modes presented by this unusual mix of composers. Naxos' engineering gives listeners a realistic sense of the recording venue. This is one of those discs you just put in your player and totally enjoy.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com
Schubert: Sonatas / Migdal, Kellermann
As Jacob Kellermann points out in the commentary to this album, there is an unbroken tradition of performing arrangements of Franz Schubert’s music on the guitar. Already in his lifetime some of his most popular songs appeared with simplified guitar accompaniment, marketed by music publishers wanting to exploit the growing market for domestic music-making. Schubert himself composed very little for the instrument, and there are doubts regarding Schubert’s own skills on the instrument. Nevertheless it is well known that the guitar was in fashion with the middle-class Viennese among which Schubert and his circle of friends moved. In his notes, Kellermann argues that elements of the light, melody-driven and carefree musical style favoured in that environment and present in stylized form in much of Schubert’s music is the very aspect that makes it so inviting to play on the guitar. DuoKeMi was formed by Kellermann and Daniel Migdal in 2006, and the two are constantly aiming to expand the repertoire for their combination of instruments. This has resulted in a number of commissions as well as new transcriptions, often by Kellermann himself as in the case of the much-loved Arpeggione Sonata recorded here.
Nocturnos de Andalucía
Verdi's Guitar / Rinehart
The six Verdi fantasies are taken from a larger Mertz collection of 34 similar pieces based on operas, called Opern-Revue (Op.8). These “revues” were not unlike works for piano by composers such as Liszt, which were arrangements of or fantasies on popular operatic arias. Both these and Mertz’s revues responded to the popular demand of the opera “experience” adapted for a small, private setting. Mertz’s revues are more ambitious, however—they adapt not just a single aria, but the entire opera, compressing a large-scale, 2–3 hour production into a 10–15 minute piece medley for solo guitar. Each revue is essentially a medley consisting of an introduction, arias (with variation), and dramatic high points. Mertz’s Verdi fantasies are even more impressive, considering Verdi’s mid-19th century status as a leading composer of dramatic opera. Mertz retains Verdi’s drama and flair, but also adds an element of intimacy by distilling the operas down to minimal voices in the solo guitar. Rinehart navigates both of these qualities in his historically-informed performances. His interpretations embrace the free lyricism afforded to a solo piece, resulting in new perspectives on Verdi’s masterpieces.
Rodrigo: Concierto De Aranjuez, Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre / Ramirez
Charles Ramirez is a guitarist of rare skill. A preeminent performer in the generation of guitarists that followed Segovia, he has held the post of Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music since the age of 25, raising the profile of the instrument through his concerts and education activities since mid-1970s. This disc is the first in a new series of recordings featuring Charles Ramirez and sees him perform works by Joaquín Rodrigo with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe - the Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasia para un gentilhombre - under conductor and founding member of the orchestra Douglas Boyd. The programme is completed with Rodrigo's enchanting solo-guitar piece Elogio de la guitara.
Gubaidulina: Repentance / Yang, Halasz, Kellermann, Brar, Stubenrauch
Within the output of Sofia Gubaidulina, solo and chamber music occupies a position of prominence; she has written more than eighty such works. One of the earliest is the brief – and not really typical – Serenade for solo guitar from 1960, composed as a commission from a Moscow publishing house for inclusion in a collection of guitar compositions. The composer was asked to write a piece not overly difficult or progressive, and has later described the result as ‘music for pleasure’. Demonstrating a particular closeness to the guitar, Gubaidulina’s later writing for it has exploited its sound spectrum in previously unimagined ways. Two further works involving the guitar are included here, with Repentance from 2008 being a reworking of an earlier work, just as its title is a translation of the original’s Italian one, Ravvedimento. Her latest work involving the guitar, and also the latest on this disc (and a world première recording) is Sotto voce for viola, double bass and two guitars. About this unusual combination, Gubaidulina has remarked: ‘It fascinated me on account of its dark colour and its potential for contrast between a muted, almost whispered sotto voce sound and that particular sort of expressivity that low-pitched instruments possess’. Each with a duration of more than 20 minutes, these two works frame the equally substantial but much earlier Piano Sonata. Looking back at her youth, the composer has described the piano in her family home as ‘the only light’ in ‘a fairly grey and uninteresting existence’. Striking features of the sonata include borrowings from jazz and the twelve-tone row which underpins all its three movements – a nod towards the dodecaphony through which Gubaidulina asserted her place in the Russian musical avant-garde at an early stage. This varied and fascinating journey into the world of Sofia Gubaidulina’s chamber music is given us by a Munich-based group of eminent musicians.