Giulio Regondi

An important figure in the history of Romantic guitar music, Giulio Regondi was widely admired during his lifetime but unfairly neglected and forgotten for decades after his death. Most of the poetic, captivating works recorded here were rediscovered in the late 20th century and edited by eminent guitar scholar Simon Wynberg (who is also the author of the booklet notes for this disc).

Giuseppe Mazzini, the greatest revolutionary of the 19th century in Europe, was very passionate about music, he attended theaters and organized an annual concert to support the Italian School he founded in London. He published a very interesting “Philosophy of music” in Paris in 1836 and, as we know from the letters to his mother written in periods of exile from Italy, he loved to play the guitar. His three guitars, appearing for the first time together in a single recording, are preserved in his birthplace in Genoa, today Museo del Risorgimento – Istituto Mazziniano, at the Istituto Storico Nazionale Domus Mazziniana in Pisa, where he died, and in the private collection preserved in Milan by Marco Battaglia. The album includes a varied and fascinating repertoire of original music by Niccolò Paganini, Luigi Moretti, Giulio Regondi and Luigi Legnani, a song specifically mentioned in a letter from Mazzini, a theme by Giovanni Pacini varied by Mauro Giuliani, also author of a pot-pourri that includes parts of works by Gioachino Rossini, and a fantasy on Verdi's Traviata, elaborated by Caspar Joseph Mertz.

The 19th century was a significant time for both opera and the guitar. Opera was everywhere, and its characteristics gradually began to appear in other styles of music as composers tried to encapsulate the expressiveness and flexibility of the voice into their works. At the same time, the guitar underwent major changes in construction; this disc showcases pieces that combine these two major elements of 19th? century music, all of which are played by Roch Modrzejewski – praised in Les Cahiers de la Guitare as an ‘extraordinary, demanding, gifted and clever guitarist’.

Over the last four years, guitarist Alexandra Whittingham has reached listeners worldwide, not only through concerts and competition successes but above all online, where her video performances of classical guitar repertoire have gained over 25 million YouTube views. Now she brings all of her freshness, charm, curiosity and determination to bear on her first studio album. Recorded in a year when the relationship between musicians and audiences has never been more topical, My European Journey is a testament to what the imagination can achieve in a time of unprecedented physical barriers.