Musical Dances, a Carnival, and a Chaconne on Fretworks

This week on Fretworks, a program devoted primarily to the classical guitar, we'll start with a lot of mandolins for a Slavonic Dance by Antonin Dvorak with the Toulouse Mandolin Ensemble. Then Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang performs Fransisco Tarrega's Variations on the Carnival of Venice. Francesco Molino was one of a group of virtuoso guitarist-composers who were popular in Paris and other European cities in the early 19th century.  Molino is not quite as well-known today as Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliano or Fernando Sor, but he did write this very enjoyable Guitar Concertino in E minor.  It's from a great recording featuring Pepe Romero and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields with Iona Brown. Christopher Parkening will play an arrangement for solo guitar of the daunting Chaconne from the Violin Partita No. 2 of Johann Sebastian Bach.  This transcription was made by Andres Sevovia of a work described as "the ultimate test of a guitarist's technical and interpretive prowess."  This challenging and profound music has long been considered the equivalent of that in its original version for solo violin. We'll lighten things up near the end of the hour with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and their arrangement of the Habanera from Georges Bizet's opera, Carmen. Fretworks airs Saturay evenings at 7 and Wednesday evenings at 7 pm on Classical 101.  Here's the L.A. Guitar Quartet playing the entire Carmen Suite: