If you’re into the guitar, then you’ll lap up every minute. "Born in Florence, Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied with Pizzetti and was helped in his early career...

If you’re into the guitar, then you’ll lap up every minute.

"Born in Florence, Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied with Pizzetti and was helped in his early career by Alfredo Casella. He met Segovia in 1932 and this inspired him to write his 1st Guitar Concerto, subsequently he wrote nearly 100 works for the instrument. He left Italy in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, and found himself, through the good offices of Jascha Heifetz, for whom he had written his 2nd Violin Concerto in 1931, in Hollywood with a contract from Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer where, over the next fifteen years he wrote over 200 scores. He was also an influential teacher and among his pupils are Jerry Goldsmith, Louis Ballard and John Williams. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is probably best remembered today for his guitar music, especially that 1st Concerto, which has received many recordings, the solo guitar music and a handful of Shakespeare overtures.

The Sonatina Canonica is a pleasant miniature, which fills the time. It’s delightful but without depth. But what else would you want from such a piece? After a short time you don’t really notice that you’re listening to canonic writing, and the mind can simply enjoy the interplay between the instruments.

Les Guitares Bien Tempérées is a much more serious work, by which I mean that it is not light in the way that the Sonatina is light. These pieces are not primarily for entertainment, but there is much music here which is truly enjoyable. I would never have thought that it was possible to get so much variety from two guitars. Castelnuovo-Tedesco fills his pieces with every emotion imaginable, from pathos to, almost, belly laugh (is that an emotion?) There are light and breezy pieces, serious inventions, dance type pieces - very holiday advertisement time - and all this wide variety of invention adds up to a very satisfying and pleasurable whole."

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International