Like football (soccer) and coffee, the guitar is inextricably linked with Brazil in the collective imagination. Yet despite its significance to the country’s musical identity, the major class divide in the colonial period saw the guitar dismissed as an instrument of the common, uneducated populace, in contrast to the piano, which represented the aspirations of the wealthier middle classes. Things changed in the early 20th century, however. In 1916 a performance by Italian-Brazilian guitarist Canhoto won over both media and Brazilian elite, heralding the start of a new era for the guitar, and various Italian luthiers moved to the New World, taking advantage of the great market opportunities Brazil offered to turn their craft production into a more industrial enterprise. The guitar’s status as a national symbol rests on an identity-building process combining various elements, and that mix of cultural influences can be seen in the compositions of Radamés Gnattali (1906–1988).

Gnattali used elements of popular music in his supposedly high-brow compositions, blurring the boundary between the two styles. He fought relentlessly to break down the barriers between classical and popular music, becoming the most important – and most prolific – Brazilian composer in the guitar repertoire of the 1950s. His music has its own unique sound, featuring magnificent writing for the instrument, unexpected harmonic solutions and boundless inspiration. The Brazilian composer, pianist and conductor Francisco Mignone (1897–1986) – another musician of Italian heritage – was considered a ‘nationalist’ by scholars and ‘high-brow’ by those from the world of popular music. His vast oeuvre for guitar includes two large cycles – the Estudos (recorded here) and the Valsas – which showcase exceptional technical flair and impressive stylistic versatility, delving into everything from popular music to serialism.

Although Mignone wrote a large number of pieces for piano solo, his preference had always been for the orchestra, and for solo song. In his works for the piano the search for orchestral colour and texture is clearly evident in his use of ornamentation, spaced chords and explorations at the extreme ends of the keyboard. His focus on piano composition tended to be sporadic, producing many pieces in the 1940s, almost nothing in the 50s and early 60s, and eventually a return to larger forms, in particular the 2nd, 3rd and 4th sonatas. His works for piano solo fall into some natural groupings, the four sonatinas and four sonatas, more than thirty waltzes, and the the nine Lendas sertanejas. Of the remaining pieces two-thirds are written in a predominantly 19th century European language, and the remainder reflect the influence of Brazilian folklore, in rhythm and form. Adrian Farmer