Classical Guitar 2009

25 disc box set featuring music for the classical guitar from the 16th century up to the present day. Some of the works performed include 'Chaconnes' by Bach and Telemann, '12 Sonatas' by Scarlatti, 'Guitar Concertos' by Vivaldi, Rodrigo's 'Concierto de Aranjuez' and Brouwer's 'Music for Solo Guitar'.

This collection of music for guitar, brought together by Jose Luis Bieito as the musical element of his music+image binomis, Reflections, possesses a delightful balance of sounds. These are flowing, pulsing, mostly gentle sounds that tend to soothe and calm the listener's mind. Sounds that - through a variety of compositional techniques - tend to be sustained in time; the effects of which can sometimes capture a listener’s attention, holding it inside an extended musical moment, like a spell. When heard while viewing the accompanying (provocative, sometimes disturbing) images, the sounds can serve an additional function: grounding the listener's reaction, enabling the passage of emotion; like electricity discharging through a lightening rod.

David Starobin - New Music for Guitar, Vol. 8 (2013) {Bridge 9404}
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Classical / Modern Classical / Modern Classical / Guitar

David Starobin continues his award-winning New Music with Guitar series after a six year hiatus. Volume 8 includes two solo works and two chamber pieces in their premiere recordings. Starobin's own composition, Variations on a Theme by Carl Nielsen, takes Nielsen's “Song Behind the Plow”, first published in 1899, and subjects it to 12 variations. Paul Lansky's Partita for guitar and percussion is in four beautifully wrought and intricate movements. Six Pages by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, presents miniatures that range from light and comic to sustained and meditative. George Crumb's Ghosts of the Alhambra is a song cycle based on poems of Lorca, and features the distinguished American baritone, Patrick Mason.

Music both old and new, but all of it inspired by the timeless modal harmony of medieval and Mediterranean cultures: this is the subject of John Williams's brilliant guitar disc for Sony, which also features his debut as a composer. The main work is his own "Aeolian Suite" for guitar and chamber orchestra, based on both original and 14th-century tunes (one of which, the "Saltarello," appeared on early-music pioneer David Munrow's disc called Instruments of the Middle Ages). The suite is a lovely piece of writing, deftly composed, and neither tacky nor pretentious. It's paired with an inspired assortment of spiritually related but diverse arrangements and original pieces by Satie, Theodorakis, Domeniconi, and an emotionally intense four-movement work called "Stélé," by Australian composer Phillip Houghton. Naturally, Williams performs each piece expertly, but most important, he makes his instrument sing, and that's just what the music demands. Simply super.

The Murail "Tellur" is a fantastic work, in fact when you hear the opening it doesn't sound like a guitar, more like electronic music,it begins in the high register,harmonics used, that slowly then decends, the impetus of the work is the flamenco style of playing mixed with these extended techniques, The French avant-garde, French composers are not prolific, they hone single works for months prior to writing, and really only write single works within any genre, (this is Murail's only work for the guitar) The Lachenmann by contrast is a early work before he really discovered his voice and relays, relies on the performers reciting text of Chris Caudwell,activist like stuff that today sounds very dated in a self-conscious way.