Classical Guitar Volume 2

Jason Vieaux, "among the elite of today’s classical guitarists" (Gramophone), is described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation". Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo", "Play". Vieaux’s multiple appearances over the years with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Strings Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Caramoor Festival, etc., have forged his reputation as a top-drawer chamber musician.Regular collaborators include the Escher String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. Now, Vieaux releases "Bach Volume 2", a follow-up to Volume 1. This is Jason's first release since the 2015 release of Grammy Award winning "Play".

Bach’s Clavier Übung is a good example of an understatement. Übung means exercise, practice; if one were to judge the book by its cover, the obvious deduction would be that Bach’s Clavier Übung is a set of finger exercises, in the fashion of Hanon or Czerny. To be sure, Domenico Scarlatti’s magnificent keyboard Sonatas are likewise called Essercizii, “exercises”; and they are far from a dry form of gymnastics for fingers. Moreover, etymologically “exercitium” relates to training in the martial arts (from exercitus, the army); thus, it was also a training in virtue. The Latin word virtus is at the root of its English translation, “virtue”, but is also related to vir, man (the soldier, the hero), and to “virtuosity”, which today indicates also technical prowess and musical accomplishment.

Jason Vieaux, "among the elite of today’s classical guitarists" (Gramophone), is described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation". Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo", "Play". Vieaux’s multiple appearances over the years with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Strings Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Caramoor Festival, etc., have forged his reputation as a top-drawer chamber musician.Regular collaborators include the Escher String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. Now, Vieaux releases "Bach Volume 2", a follow-up to Volume 1. This is Jason's first release since the 2015 release of Grammy Award winning "Play".

Described by the Boston Globe's Michael Manning as a musician who plays "beyond virtuosity," guitarist Sharon Isbin has been a consistent challenge for critics, who struggle to find the right superlative that would do justice to her exquisite playing. A Renaissance woman of the guitar, Isbin performs worldwide at famous venues, commissions new works from distinguished American composers (more than any other guitarist) for her instruments, collaborates with a wide variety of musicians, and indefatigably searches for new music to play.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini's activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the "chittara francese", he received from his father his first musical grounding on a "mandolino genovese", an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar. The Catalogue's chronological list ranges from 1795, with Carmagnola con variazioni ms. 1, to 1835, with Variazioni sul Barucabà, an entire cycle of compositions that features the constant presence of a guitar in combination with string instruments. This context contains the compositions for solo guitar, which are divided into three groups: Ghiribizzi, Sonate, and Compositions of various types, including some Sonatine. The recording dedicated to Paganini's opera omnia for guitar is divided in two double CDs volumes, the first volume includes the 43 Ghiribizzi and other various compositions (sonatas, sonatinas and free forms). Mauro Bonelli, for the realisation of this work, used a period guitar with catgut strings, tuned to 415 Hz: nineteenth-century Austrian guitar without a label; the fact that it's fretboard can be tilted by means of a peg connects it with the best Legnani-Stauffer tradition.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini's activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the "chittara francese", he received from his father his first musical grounding on a "mandolino genovese", an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar. The Catalogue's chronological list ranges from 1795, with Carmagnola con variazioni ms. 1, to 1835, with Variazioni sul Barucabà, an entire cycle of compositions that features the constant presence of a guitar in combination with string instruments. This context contains the compositions for solo guitar, which are divided into three groups: Ghiribizzi, Sonate, and Compositions of various types, including some Sonatine. The recording dedicated to Paganini's opera omnia for guitar is divided in two double CDs volumes, the first volume includes the 43 Ghiribizzi and other various compositions (sonatas, sonatinas and free forms). Mauro Bonelli, for the realisation of this work, used a period guitar with catgut strings, tuned to 415 Hz: nineteenth-century Austrian guitar without a label; the fact that it's fretboard can be tilted by means of a peg connects it with the best Legnani-Stauffer tradition.

The definition of a perimeter of coherence for a recording or concert programme is rightly given special attention by performers. From the didactic choice of recording the opera omnia of an author, to that of identifying a formal, rather than a historical or poetic connection, the choices are innumerable and a priori unquestionable. However, I would like to emphasise how the idea pursued by Andrea Corongiu, in this his second volume dedicated to guitar sonatas of Mediterranean inspiration, has an intrinsic strength: the selection of the pieces proposed moves at the same time from formal and poetic criteria, ensuring that coherence and heterogeneity that are a sure reason for the listener’s interest. This second part of Corongiu’s research moves on from what was left undone in the first volume of 2019: if there, in fact, Angelo Gilardino’s Sonata del Guadalquivir closed the programme, offering the listener an innovative exploration of Mediterranean themes, here the first part of the recital is entirely dedicated to the composer from Asigliano, who passed away at the beginning of 2022, and to two composers who have taken up some elements of his invaluable human and artistic legacy in a different and personal way: Cristiano Porqueddu and Kevin Swierkosz-Lenart.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini's activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the "chittara francese", he received from his father his first musical grounding on a "mandolino genovese", an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar. The Catalogue's chronological list ranges from 1795, with Carmagnola con variazioni ms. 1, to 1835, with Variazioni sul Barucabà, an entire cycle of compositions that features the constant presence of a guitar in combination with string instruments. This context contains the compositions for solo guitar, which are divided into three groups: Ghiribizzi, Sonate, and Compositions of various types, including some Sonatine. The recording dedicated to Paganini's opera omnia for guitar is divided in two double CDs volumes, the first volume includes the 43 Ghiribizzi and other various compositions (sonatas, sonatinas and free forms). Mauro Bonelli, for the realisation of this work, used a period guitar with catgut strings, tuned to 415 Hz: nineteenth-century Austrian guitar without a label; the fact that it's fretboard can be tilted by means of a peg connects it with the best Legnani-Stauffer tradition.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini’s activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the “chittara francese,” he received from his father his first musical grounding on a “mandolino genovese,” an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini’s activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the “chittara francese,” he received from his father his first musical grounding on a “mandolino genovese,” an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar.