Astor PIAZZOLLA (1921 - 1992)
- “Dos Piezas” Astor Piazzolla is the world’s foremost composer of tango music, revolutionizing the traditional tango into a new style, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music, and perhaps the most famous bandoneon player in history, democratizing and valorizing the instrument internationally.
Astor Piazzolla was of Italian descent, born in Mar del Plata, near Buenos Aires. He was often travelling to the United States to stay for extended periods of time, including part of his school years. His first bandoneón he received at age eight and learned to play both, that instrument and the piano as a child. At age 15 he began playing with several tango orchestras. He formed his own orchestra in 1946, composing and experimenting with the sound and structure of the tango.
In this period he also started to compose music for film.
But his deep interest in classical music soon made him disband his orchestra, immensing himself into classical compositions. With his symphonic piece „Buenos Aires“ he won a composing competition, and went to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (famous french music teacher and conductor). She urged him to remain true to himself and to continue his experiments with the tango, combining his two passions, the classical music and the tango.
When he returned again to Argentina, he formed the influential „Quinteto Tango Nuevo“ (1960), featuring a violin, electric guitar, piano, double bass and bandoneón. His innovations, including counterpoint and new rhythms and harmonies, were initially not well received in his country, but they were greatly admired in the United States and Europe. In Argentina and Uruguay Piazzolla’s new tango gained acceptance only in the 1980s. His music influenced a new generation of tango composers and was featured during the 1970s and ’80s in film scores, television programs, and commercials, collaborating with artists like the great italian singer Milva, the jazz percussionist Gary Burton, among many others.
Isaac ALBENIZ (1860 – 1909)
Preludio (from “España – Seis hojas de album“, op. 165) Zorzico (from “España – Seis hojas de album“, op. 165) Capricho Catalan (from “España – Seis hojas de album“, op. 165) Malagueña (from “España – Seis hojas de album“, op. 165) Sevilla (from “Suite Española“, op. 47) - a choice of 5 pieces, originally composed for piano - The performance of Isaac Albéniz’s piano music on the guitar is a tradition as old as the music itself. The first guitarist to arrange Albéniz’s music was probably Francisco Tárrega (1852 – 1909), an almost exact contemporary of Albéniz and a fellow Catalan. Numerous arrangements followed by his students Miguel Llobet and Emilio Pujol, by Andres Segovia, Miguel Ángel, García Velasco, Luis Maravilla. In more recent years, many concert artists have continued to arrange Albéniz’s piano music, and in so doing have established an important repertory of adopted music for the guitar. In fact we can say that today pieces such as Granada, Leyenda, Sevilla, Córdoba, Mallorca and Torre Bermeja grace more guitar recital programs than they do once for piano. The musical texture presented in much of Albéniz’s music imitates the guitar playing, singing, and dancing typical of flamenco music.
Many pieces are built on the strummed accompaniment patterns of the guitar.
Albéniz was the first Spanish composer to achieve a significant national style of composition, and was the major inspiration of the Spanish composers who came after him. Unlike his successors (composers such as Turina and Falla), however, Albéniz did not introduce authentic folk elements into his music.
His compositions consist essentially of written-out improvisations based upon his own melodies evocative of the atmosphere of authenic Spanish folk music, but not based directly upon ist details.
The Prélude is the opening piece of “España – Seis hojas de album“, a most authentic group of miniature tone pictures of different geographical regions and musical idioms of Spain. In its harmony and texture, this short improvisatory prelude looks forward to the terseness often found in the music of Albéniz’s successors Turina and Falla. The unaccompanied melody presented at the beginning of the piece is quite free and represents Albéniz’s most extended use of such an improvised melody so far in his output.
Zorzico is based upon the national dance of the Basque region of Northern Spain, and is defined by its characteristic dotted rhythms and quintuple meter.
Capricho Catalán ist the idyllic piece. Albéniz is recalling perhaps a gentler Catalonia than that suggested in Cataluña (from Suite España op. 47). A dance-like ostinato is maintained throughout the piece. Phrase groupings highlight the smaller harmonic groupings within the more obvious fourmesure phrase.
Malagueña is another very authentic-sounding piece, a spanish dance song with a conventional harmonic basis. The fandango rhythm is placed in the right hand and the melody in the left hand. The „guitar“ arpeggios again look forward - like the Prélude to this suite - to Falla and Turina.
Sevilla (Sevillanas) (from Suite España op. 47) is a flamenco-style dance of Andalusian origin, and here Albéniz creates a piece of particular grace. The typical flamenco rhythm underlies a lyrical melody in the main sections, while the two hands play a recitative-like melody an octave apart for the contrasting sections. This is one of the best-known pieces from the Suite España.
Agustín BARRIOS (1885 – 1944)
"The indigenous soul who sings on the guitar"- Confesión - Chôro da saudade - Barcarola - Una limosna … Agustín Barrios Mangoré was a virtuosic guitarist and an innovative composer born in Paraguay, into a large family which esteemed both music and literature. Barrios began to play the guitar at a very early age and made duos with his younger brother. Through the folk music of his native country he received his first introduction to music; in 1898, he was formally introduced to the classical guitar repertoire by Gustovo Sosa Escalada; he began to seriously compose around 1905.
Agustín Barrios was a great lover of culture. Beside spanish, his mother tongue, he spoke Guaraní, the native language of Paraguay; he read french, english and german, and he was deeply interested in literature, poetry, philosophy and theosophy. He was quoted as having said "One cannot become a guitarist if he has not bathed in the fountain of culture."
He travelled a lot throughout Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, the country where he lived more than in the others and where his great fan and rich "mentor" Dr. Borda Pagola went on helping him materially and artistically for a great number of years. He also toured through Europe, where he was unfortunately promoted as "the indian that plays Bach" ... and having a "marketing" dressed (or mostly undressed) as the "cacique Nitsuga Mangoré" ("nitsuga" is "Agustin" read backwards...).
Barrios' compositions are may be the logical expansions of guitaristic and instrumental-compositional technics defined by masters such as Fernando Sor and Francisco Tarrega, carried to an even higher level of expressiveness and technical expertise. His music is a priceless repertoire source for all lovers of the guitar for its original ways of using the instrument and the permanent "mix" of typical folcloric forms, traditional european forms and "romantic" flavours, so to speak.
The three essential categories revealed in Barrios' compositions are folkloric, imitative and religious. Barrios honored the music and the people of his native land and composed pieces modeled after folkloric songs of various countries of South America (milonga, pericón, zapateado, tango, cueca, choro...). Imitating composition and technics form the Baroque and Romantic periods was another side to his craftsmanship, “La Cathedral“ (inspired by his regular visits to the old city cathedral in Montevideo, Uruguay) for example, may be considered as one of the many Barrios' imitations of Bach counterpoint. Religious believes and experiences also play an important role in Barrios' compositions, which are always demonstrating and describing his deep, sincere, kindhearted and emotional soul.
“Confesión“ and “Una limosna por el amor do Dio“ are 2 examples of religious inspired works.
"Chôro da Saudade" ("Nostalgic Chôro"), based on the Brasilian rhythmical lyric and improvisational form, is divided in three parts with the typical "game" of serenade spontaneous interactions with two, three or more players. A chôro was played by a "lover" under a balcony to try to seduce a beautiful lady with music and words, until she accepted to appear discretely at the window... "Chôro" derives from the verb "chorar" (to cry...), the name that the neighbours started to use to name the "serenaders".... It developed a kind of "jazz" that the musicians from Rio de Janeiro enjoyed to develop and establish as one of the most representative of Brasilian popular music forms, normally played with one or two guitars, one of them at least a seven string guitar, plus a mandolin or a "cavaquinho" (very small and highly pitched guitar with four strings, similar to the mandolin), a flute and a "pandeiro" (tambourin with metals) for the percussive basic support.
Of course there are much larger groups that cultivated and cultivate nowadays this kind of music, that Barrios heard during his travels to Brazil, and adopted with full knowledge, technics, joy and passion for many of his compositions. "Chôro da Saudade" is the most representative of his "brazilian" works.
“Julio Florida“ (Barcarola) is dedicated to a beautiful young lady, a friend of this daugther. It is a barcarolla plenty of tender and innocent ideas. A real "bonbon" gift to the young lady, based on a four notes imbricating motive, both for the melody and the accompaniment, with delicious "tournures" and nicely inspired moments.
Jean Philippe RAMEAU (1683 - 1764)- Allemande
- RigaudonJean Philippe Rameau is regarded as one of the most important french composers and music theorists of the 18th century, the late Baroque era. He replaced Jean- Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera, and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, beside François Couperin.
Rameau’s music is by one side full of typical french components, like clarity, grace, moderation, elegance and the pursuite of pittoresques. By other side his music is characterised by the exceptional technical knowledge of a composer who wanted above all to be renowned as a theorist of the art. His music was new, using techniques never known before, but it took place within the framework of old-fashioned forms. Especially his revolutionary use of harmony provoked fierce attacks and critics by the supporters of Lully’s style.
Rameau wrote motets, cantatas and instrumental music (especially for harpsichord), and works for the stage (operas), to which he dedicated the last thirty years of his career almost exclusively. In his theoretical works (like for example „Treatise on Harmony“) Rameau initiated a revolution in music theory, introducing the „fundamental bass“ (separate from any other actual bass part), that can be used to analyse and explain the harmonic progression in a musical piece.
Mario CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895 - 1968)- FantasíaMario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was one of Italy’s most influential and important
composers during the 20th century. He developped his very distinctive neoclassical style with spanish flavour, mostly in his gigantic Hollywood film-music productions.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born in Florence, first introduced to the piano by his mother, and composed his first pieces when he was just nine years old. After completing a degree in piano in 1914 he began studying composition and received a diploma in composition in 1918. After meeting Andrés Segovia at a festival in Venice in 1932, he was inspired to write for the guitar, in the following years he wrote over one hundred works for this instrument.
In 1939 he immigrated to the United States, and began a remarkable carreer as a film composer in Los Angeles, contracted by Metro-Goldwin-Mayer for about 200 Hollywood movies. Among his students we find Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, André Previn, Nelson Riddle and John Williams.
Fantasia op 145 is one of the “flowers“ of the long friendship-garden the composer had with Andrés Segovia. In fact this opus was dedicated to “Andrés y Paquita“, referring to the pianist Paquita Madriguera, Segovia’s second wife, with whom Segovia was living in Uruguay during the second world war. This concertant piece was intended to be an hommage to the union of the two artists, and the form and style are also neo-classical, with the spanish flavor that the italianamerican composer developped so much, mostly in his gigantic Hollywood filmmusic productions.
Regino SAINZ DE LA MAZA (1896 - 1981)
Eduardo SAINZ DE LA MAZA (1903 - 1982)- Preludio- Habanera- Soliloquio- Campanas del albaRegino Sainz de la Maza (1896 - 1981) Born in Burgos Regino Sainz de la Maza started to study classical guitar when he was ten, and after some small appearances for friends , family and school colleagues he gave his first concert when he was fourteen. He studied in Burgos at the beginning, and then also in Bilbao, San Sebastián and Madrid with different teachers, although he was a very independent spirit and very much self taught both in guitar and in composition and arrangements, greatly inspired and helped from some good friends like Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla, among others. In 1940 in the Palau de la Música Auditorium in Barcelona, he premiered the “Concierto de Aranjuez”, composed for him by his friend Joaquín Rodrigo. He travelled widely giving concerts in Spain, South and North America and Japan, until 1979. He died in Madrid in 1981.
Eduardo Sainz de la Maza (1903 - 1982) Eduardo, younger brother of Regino, was a “shy” but appreciated guitarist and a prolific composer. His compositional language is lyrical, neo-romantic, with influences of impressionism and Spanish folklore, and a little”touch” of american soft jazzy harmonies. His most famous work is the suite called “Platero y yo “, after the famous writings of Juan Ramón Jiménez.
The “Preludio” of today is the opening piece of that above mentionned suite, with a neo-romantic statement leading to a dreamy simple charming melody, a short melopée and a da capo with an emotional end, as a “pressagio” for the rest of the suite. “Campanas del Alba” is a milestone in the compositional corpus of Eduardo, one of his best pieces, and a beautiful tremolo contribution to the spanish guitar repertoire.
Alberto GINASTERA (1916 – 1983)
Sonata para guitarra, op. 47 Alberto Ginastera was born in Argentina, but his musical education was very strictly european. Most of his compositions are harmonic and rhythmical avantgarde pieces, inspired by the south american indian culture, full of indian rhythms and melodic themes. It was always clear that this duality had to become one day a hommage to the guitar, since the guitar and the “gaucho culture“ of the argentinian Pampas are deeply connected.
But Alberto Ginastera composed his Sonata for guitar very late in his life, this sonata had to be ordered by a brasilian guitarist, the sponsor was US american.
The 1st movement, “Esordio“, is a voluptuous “Call to the Gods“. This piece contains 2 motives of the Quechua indians and the imitation of the „Caja India“, a ceremonial tambour with the dry and dark sound of a funeral march.
The 2nd movement is a “Scherzo“ on a Chacarera rhythm with rhapsodic elements and moments, mixed with humorous references, including an insert of Wagner’s Sixtus beckmesser personnage.
The 3rd movement “Canto“ is composed like a cadenza, with rezitative and virtuous moments of the european avantgarde music. Ginastera was living a big part of his life in Geneva in Switzerland, he never wanted to forget the european tradition of the avantgarde.
The 4th movement “Final“ is a clear hommage to the wide plains of the Argentinian Pampa and the Altiplanos (the highlands) of the Andes. The strumming guitar technique of the folklore guitarists of Argentina and of Uruguay ist the main inspiration and the principal driver of this piece. 4 typical dances with their strong rhythms are used: Malambo, Chacarera, Bailecito, Chamamé.
Programme notes by Alvaro Pierri