“Blue stands for a particularly intimate mood,” says renowned Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas. And correspondingly his latest album is titled The Blue Album, which will be released by Sony Classical on 9 June 2023. “Blue symbolizes a mysterious intermediary realm: one thinks of the moment when the sun rises and night slowly withdraws,” Pablo Sainz-Villegas goes on to explain. These are exceptional moments, moments between silence and waking, between heaven and earth, between light and darkness. These are also the moments that spirit us away from the hectic routine of our everyday lives and that create an atmosphere of reverie and relaxation, allowing us time to slow down. All of this is reflected in Pablo Sainz-Villegas’s new programme. Few composers have captured this mood so unmistakably in their music as the French composer Erik Satie, who is represented here by selections from his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and “La fille aux cheveux de lin” are almost magical in their expressiveness: this is music that is filled with calm and with the power to enchant.

According to Pablo Sainz-Villegas, “this album brings together some of the most beautiful and most heartfelt melodies that have ever been written. All these pieces create a magical atmosphere, their colours create a mood, a mystery. The guitar whispers an invitation to the listener to explore and go to the most intimate part of your soul. It creates a moment to look inside and have a conversation with the essence of yourself. “ The repertory is correspondingly wide-ranging, extending, as it does, from the German and Italian Baroque – with music by Silvius Leopold Weiss and Domenico Scarlatti – to the present day with music by Philip Glass and Max Richter’s A Catalogue of Afternoons – which, as first single, is out today. Sainz-Villegas also undertakes a foray into the world of film music with the Cavatina from the classic film The Deer Hunter of 1978. And this release inevitably includes the international hit La Paloma, one of the most frequently performed and arranged pieces of the last 150 years. This Spanish work has come to embody the quintessential notion of longing.

The Alexander String Quartet and guitarist William Kanengiser form a dynamic collaboration that explores the music of Sting, Led Zeppelin, John Dowland and The Beatles by way of contemporary composers Ian Krouse, Dušan Bogdanovic and Leo Brouwer. In this project, William Kanengiser and the Alexander String Quartet pay tribute to a group of English musicians who conquered the musical world with their revolutionary explorations. From the Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland to the pop/rock icons Sting, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, these artists made a lasting impact far from the shores of their small island. Their music served as inspiration for a set of compositions for guitar and string quartet by the talented composers Ian Krouse, Dušan Bogdanovic and Léo Brouwer. It is especially appropriate that the guitar sits squarely at the center of these works, as the plucked string was the primary musical voice of these British innovators.

Regarded as one of the greatest Greek composers and a legend in his native land, Manos Hadjidakis is also one of the best-known internationally thanks to a body of works that touches many musical genres, from concert music to popular songs and scores for the stage and screen. Hadjidakis and his music has been present in the life of Elena Papandreou from an early age, but the idea for Paper Moon, her latest recital, began with her friendship with the French guitarist, composer and arranger Roland Dyens. Sharing Papandreou’s admiration for Hadjidakis, Dyens arranged a couple of his songs, and dedicated them to her. The two agreed to collaborate on a complete disc of Hadjidakis songs, a project that was suspended when Dyens passed away in 2016. But his former student, the guitarist, composer and arranger Orestis Kalampalikis agreed to continue in Dyens’ footsteps, and arranged a further ten songs, including the one that has given its title to the entire album.

Arranging a song for an instrument naturally means that the lyrics are lost, and in the disc’s liner notes Kalampalikis describes how he endeavored to create versions inspired by the meaning of the lyrics – sometimes by Hadjidakis himself and often dealing with love, longing and loneliness. Closing the disc, Preludio de la Nostalgia was composed in 2020 by the legendary Cuban composer Leo Brouwer. Written for and dedicated to Elena Papandreou, it was inspired by another song by Hadjidakis, Nanourisma (Lullaby) and can be seen as a homage from a fellow composer.

On its new GENUIN album, the Lux Nova Duo takes up the cause of composer Leo Brouwer. The Cuban old master is well known to guitarists and lovers of guitar music but deserves more attention for his gripping, pulsating and multifaceted music! In the unusual line-up with Lydia Schmidl on accordion and Jorge Paz Verastegui on guitar, the Lux Nova Duo presents smaller and more extensive works by Brouwer, such as his Souvenir de Liège, the expansive Triptico concertante or the centuries-spanning Folía a través de los siglos. Through the subtle playing of the Lux Nova Duo, we discover Brouwer's stylistic range, which extends from folkloristic impressions to new, advanced musical language.

Originally from Brazil, André Rodrigues distinguishes himself as a specialist in Brazilian traditional and classical repertoires. The beginning of his career took place in his homeland as an accompanist of instrumental and vocal music genres. Being a versatile musician, Rodrigues has performed on the stages of jazz, dance and theater, and has been awarded numerous prizes in national and international classical guitar competitions. André Rodrigues holds a bachelor’s degree in Brazilian popular music from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil), a master’s degree in classical guitar performance from the Université de Montréal and a doctorate degree from this same institution, for which he was funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. He has been awarded several grants by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and by the Canada Council for the Arts.

The album Musical Landscapes contains a carefully thought over and set together group of eight compositions. The latter are formative of a specific music journey that spreads out from north to south and from west to east. This journey integrates diversity and beauty of art experience: from musical subtleties through grandeur of sounds, up to Spanish guitar temperament, from raindrops to storms with hailstones, from corta figure to sonorism. The selected compositions are, on one part, the most prominent works of world music in new arrangements and, on the other, the rarely performed pieces that were originally composed for the four-guitar ensemble. The presented transcriptions, full of the four musicians’ creative solutions and conceptions make up a new repertoire characteristic of fairly individual and authorial traits. The keynote of the project is the landscape conceived of in variety of manners.

Anne Akiko Meyers has amassed a multitude of fans and admirers for her exquisitely curated recordings, often exploring her passion for new music, and old music in new guises. Her quest for creative collaborations has inspired countless commissions and world-premieres, with the results infusing Shining Night, an album that embraces themes of love, poetry, and nature.

Anne’s fruitful association with composer Morten Lauridsen led to the arrangement of his popular choral work Sure on this Shining Night, for violin and piano, lending its name to the album’s title. From there springs forth an album imbued with music of light and hope, spanning the history of music through Baroque, Romantic, Popular, and current genres. J.S.Bach’s beautiful Air in G and Corelli’s colorful La Folia – arranged for violin and guitar – rub shoulders with Latin-tinged Estrellita (Little Star) by Manuel Ponce, the Aria from Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, and Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango. Two of the 20th century’s most iconic songs appear in intimate and tender new arrangements: Duke Ellington’s (In My) Solitude, and Can’t Help Falling in Love, famously crooned by The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Anne’s collaborators are eminent Italian pianist Fabio Bidini and Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux.

REVIEW:

Few violinists would have had the idea to ask the quintessential choral composer Morton Lauridsen, as Meyers did, to arrange two of his choral works for duo with violin. Fewer would have juxtaposed Lauridsen with Elvis Presley, and fewer still would have been able to make this marvelously varied program hang together. Meyers transforms the basic violin encore type of program into something new and fresh. She has made a specialty of bold, original, and immediate programming, but has outdone herself this time.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Fleur de Son Classics is proud to release this stunning, debut recording of virtuoso Mexican guitarist, Ricardo Saeb. The program is a playlist of masterworks for the guitar, from the Spanish folkloric mannerisms in Aguado’s “Le Fandango”, to the metrical dichotomy of “Zephyr” by American guitarist/composer, Christopher Gainey (World Premiere Recording). The pieces herein comprise a collection of contrasting and continuously enthralling guitar music. Ricardo Saeb is enjoying an international concert career and we welcome him to the Fleur de Son Classics roster of distinguished recording artists.

This album pays homage to the guitar. While the casual listener may recognize many of these works as favorites from the guitar canon, the majority of the repertoire wasn’t originally written for the instrument.

Only the Sor and the Brouwer were originally guitar compositions. The other works started life in a different form, and stand testament to the strength and versatility of the guitar to not only play such a diverse range of repertoire, but to truly embrace it. With its polyphonic capabilities and roots in popular music around the world, the guitar is singularly capable of such a traverse of styles. This album is not, as the title may imply, a collection of the most beloved or greatest hits from the classical guitar repertoire, but instead a demonstration of the power and ability of the guitar to perform and assume ownership of such beloved repertoire.

New York-based Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd has been described by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, by Gramophone as a “fine guitarist”, and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a player who deserves to be heard”. He has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall, to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia. Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and as part of the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover.

REVIEWS:

The sheer versatility of this instrument comes to the fore in a really eclectic selection, which traverses centuries of music from Bach to The Beatles in a sunny 60 minutes.

– BBC Music Magazine

Boyd is a very fine musician. His sense of line is beautifully showcased in Bach’s Suite, while his rhythmic acuity enlivens from the onset of Jobim’s Felicidade, performed here in Roland Dyens’s masterly arrangement. The final item, Boyd’s own technically assured arrangement of John Lennon’s ‘Julia’, makes for a quiet, slightly downbeat encore.

– Gramophone

These two concertos show the increasing importance of the guitar duo on the world’s concert stages. Leo Brouwer, one of the foremost Latin American composers, has written many admired guitar concertos but The Book of Signs is his first for two guitars, a double concerto of great virtuosity, with a majestic, songful theme in its central movement. A crucial figure in the global promotion of Brazilian rhythms for the guitar, Paulo Bellinati deploys luxurious harmonies and brilliantly effective techniques to pay tribute to the country music of Sao Paulo State in Concerto Caboclo.

This recording brings together two undisputed 20th century masterpieces and one from the 21st, all of which share surprising stories of neglect. With its sublime Adagio, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez has become a true phenomenon in the history of Western music, but like the original version of Frank Martin’s extraordinarily powerful Guitare it suffered disapproval from its dedicatee Andrés Segovia. Echoes of Rodrigo can be heard in the cinematic romanticism of Leo Brouwer’s Concierto de Benicàssim, described by the composer as “a panorama of my own ideas” and revived here by Miguel Trápaga a decade after its première.