The first track on the CD "Mediterraneo" gets your attention in a dramatic way right from the start. It's Asturias by Isaac Albeniz from the Suite espanola, music originally written for piano but right at home on the guitar.
Since 2011 when the Deutsche Grammophon recording was released, Milos Karadaglic, the classical guitarist from the small Balkan country of Montenegro, or just Milos, as he's now called, has attained world-wide acclaim.
Avi Avital is an exiting young virtuoso on the mandolin from Israel who has also gained world-wide recognition for his outstanding playing and musical personality. He performs classical music on an instrument that is more associated with folk and traditional popular music in the minds of many, than with classical music.
Csardas is the most popular music by VittorioMonti who wrote the four-minute piece in 1904, based on the folkloristic Hungarian dance the csardas.
AviAvital gives it an exuberant performance accompanied by accordion player Richard Galliano on the 2014 CD "Between Worlds," also from Deutsche Grammophon.
These two lively musical works will open and close the next Fretworks on Classical 101.
In between, I'll have The Brasil Guitar Duo playing Sonatina Canonica by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a piece from 1961 in three contrasting movements. We more often hear the popular Guitar Concerto No. 1, but it's also a delight to hear Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music for guitar (or two guitars in this case) without orchestra.
Canadian guitarist Jeffrey McFadden will play a suite of Favorite Strauss Waltzes by Napoleon Coste, the 19th century French guitarist-composer who studied with Fernando Sor in Paris. The suite was published near the end of the 1830's, so all the Waltzes are from Johann Strauss Sr. and may have coincided with his French tour of 1837. Coste's career as a virtuoso guitarist ended in 1863 after he broke his arm in an accident, but he kept teaching and composing to the end of his life in 1883.
The Amsterdam Guitar Trio teams up with the Euridice Quartet and double-bass player Carol Hart for an arrangement of a concerto in C originally for harpsichord (BWV 1064) by Johann Sebastian Bach. It's a case of the more, the merrier, hearing three guitars instead of one, plus string quartet and bass in a recording from 1992 by this fine guitar trio.
Join me for Fretworks Saturday and Wednesday evenings at 7 on Classical 101.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoCh6V_F-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mjNwZUVtBE