Guitar Works

Guitarist Anne Haasch sets the mood for a dialogue across centuries in her new Genuin recording with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Manuel María Ponce. She combines the rarely recorded 24 Preludes by the Mexican composer with the Lute Suite No. 2 by the Leipzig Thomaskantor, whom he revered. However, the juxtaposition of these works is a dialogue not only across time but across continents as well. Like Bach, Ponce has mastered the art of creating dense, eternal spheres of tension, but within ostensibly inconspicuous forms and simple, poetic lines. Anne Haasch captures this immensely expressive music's architecture, rhetoric, and content with her clear and vibrant playing.

In Raffaele Calace’s considerable musical production – approximately 200 opus numbers – 9 pieces are for solo guitar, obviously not including his single composition for Hawaiian guitar, Piccolo fiore op. 168. This statistical datum takes on a greater importance if we consider that Calace’s other solo pieces were all for the two main instruments to which he devoted his existence, the mandolin and the cantabile lute: for these instruments he composed respectively 30 and 26 works, in addition to his handbooks, which are a fundamental point of reference for the modern teaching of these instruments.

All the works are first world recordings. The flute and guitar duo couldn’t be missed in our collection of duos with guitar. Here we present a very special and unusual programme. Music by Von Call. Including three arrangements from the Opera theatre of the time. Virtuoso style music fantastically played by the German flutist Sabine Dreier. We also include a beautiful encore piece by French composer Jacques Rode. A Polonaise that shows the great quality of Rode’s music.

This album presents the complete solo works for guitar by two Catalan contemporaries, the cellist Gaspar Cassadó and the pianist Federico Mompou. Cassadó wrote six guitar works connected to his friendship with Andrés Segovia, mostly based on folk elements such as the sardana, a traditional Catalan circle dance. In Mompou’s works for guitar, the influence of his mysticism and attachment to Catalan folklore are undeniable. He composed primarily for piano but he also wrote three pieces for guitar, notably Suite compostelana for Segovia. The hypnotic, austere and lyrical elements in this work distil Mompou’s compositional genius.

"Francisco Tárrega. How did the Romantic music in" Spanish Guitar "change through the work of guitarists who were active at the same time as him, who is called the father of modern guitar playing, such as Ferrer, Bosch, Manhon, and Mrs. Platten? I will look at it. The Romantics of "Spanish Guitar" was a series of trials and errors.

Bokyung Byun, winner of the 2021 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) Competition and one of the most formidable classical guitarists of the younger generation, presents here a wide variety of music from diverse nationalities and eras.

Justin Holland was an important African American figure in the national US anti-slavery movement as well as being a significant figure in guitar composition and methodology.

The term ‘toccata’ is derived from the Italian ‘toccare’, ‘to touch’ and is a work intended as a display of manual dexterity, usually for a solo keyboard instrument. Within the toccata form other styles may be incorporated such as an adagio movement and a fugue.

Carcassi Complete Solo Guitar Works, Vol. 2 continues rediscovering the solo guitar music by Matteo Carcassi, (1796-1853).

The Mexican-American composer, Juan Trigos, has developed the concept of ‘abstract folklore’, a process by which he assimilates various literary and musical traditions in his method of composition.