Xuefei Yang HEARTSTRINGS

HEARTSTRINGS

Thibault Cauvin LEO BROUWER 30 Estudios Sencillos

30 ESTUDIOS SENCILLOS

Antipodes Duo DANCES & DREAMS

DANCES & DREAMS

Xianji Liu LATIN GUITAR SONATAS

When Xianji Liu became the first Chinese-born winner of the prestigious Francisco Tárrega International Guitar Competition in 2016, a new star emerged in the world of the classical guitar.

Latin sonatas is a journey through the popular music of Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico, its rhythms, harmonies and colours, in a contemporary language breathing new life into the old form.

Brasil Guitar Duo / Delaware Symphony Orchestra / David Amado LEO BROUWER The Book of Signs PAULO BELLINATI Concerto Caboclo

Two Twenty-first century concertos written for guitar duos from Latin America’s foremost composers, the Cuban, Leo Brouwer, and from Brazil, Paulo Bellinati. Almost an octogenarian, Brouwer has been hugely prolific in his supply of music for guitar, and in the past I have been rather ambivalent towards his deluge of scores that include twelve guitar concertos. His first concerto for two guitars, named The Book of Signs, was completed in 2003, and I would unhesitatingly describe it as the finest work I have heard from him. Rather unusual in construction, and relying on Beethoven’s piano work, 32 Variations in C minor, for the first movement’s thematic material, his skill in creating the complexity in interweaving the two instruments is continually intriguing. Enclose this in Latin American rhythms and a pro-active string orchestra, and the score certainly needed a slow movement to reduce the radiant temperature. With more than a passing relationship to a romantic Hollywood film sound-track, it leads to a final Allegro in the form of a tricky Rondo with a sentimental central section. In total, the work plays for around three quarters of an hour, and more than twice the length of Bellinati’s Concerto Caboclo. Completed in 2011, and with a full orchestral accompaniment, it is just one step away from the world of ‘pop’ music, with tunes you will think you have heard somewhere before in the opening movement, and in direct descent of Rodrigo in the finale. The Brasil Duo is technically superb in the complex passages from Brouwer, and suitably smooth in the smoochy Bellinati. Very effective orchestral participation from Delaware and their conductor, David Amado. The recording quality is outstanding in every aspect. (David Denton)

Göran Söllscher FROM YESTERDAY TO PENNY LANE

Lennon and McCartney together must be one of, if not the greatest contributors of composition to popular music. Along with the Beatles producer George Martin they influenced not one but possibly every generation of music makers since their emergence in the early '60s.
Leo Brouwer, the Cuban guitarist/composer whose broad musical views take in so many aspects of music, recognised Lennon and McCartney early on, and included arrangements of their music in his concerts, (at least one of which " Fool on the Hill" was recorded by John Williams [MK 45538]). So this collection of personalities, together with the featured Göran Söllscher, one of Sweden's premier guitarists makes for a formidable collaboration of musical talents.
Basically the disc is divided into four distinct sections, the opening tracks finds Söllscher playing five arrangements for solo guitar. These, for the most part, are successful, the lyricism of the slower pieces working well, especially "In My Life" where the harpsichord solo of the original is faithfully retained, only "Can't Buy me Love" fails to engage, possibly because the tempo chosen for the piece requires a certain swing that Sollscher just doesn't make sound convincing.
The next three selections are probably the most unusual due to the pairing of guitar and bandoneon, a type of concertina. In the hands of Per Arne Glorvigen the bandoneon displays a variety of expressive moods: from the strident, as in "Come Together" to the gentle "I Want To Hold Your Hand" where the players elect to transform the Beatles original almost demanding delivery of the title words into a tender loving request. Good stuff.
The inclusion of George Martin's composition "Three American Sketches" makes for a nice interlude in the proceedings. Not so well known for his composing as for his producing skills this piece does show Martin's understanding of a style that is very much in the tradition of 20th century American music, such as Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland.
The subtitle '7 Songs After the Beatles' is so appropriate to the collection of arrangements by Leo Brouwer as there is as much of Brouwer here as Lennon and McCartney. Certainly the tunes are the product of the Liverpool songsmiths but Brouwer's orchestral textures mark them with his own strong individual character. Never afraid to occasionally allow the orchestra to take the melody, the guitar's accompanying role always reinforces the proceedings. An orchestral episode in "Ticket To Ride" is very much as we heard in his "Concerto de Toronto" and the use of cannon at the beginning of "Eleanor Rigby" is a delight
All in all, a very well produced, entertaining recording, however I do feel that novelty is an over-riding factor with this type of disc. It is after all only one in a long line of records where the music of Lennon and McCartney has been given one sort of treatment or another. I don't know which sector of the music-buying public this disc likely to appeal to. However I do wish it well. (Andy Daly, MusicWeb International)

Zsófia Boros EN OTRA PARTE

The evocative ECM debut of the highly-talented Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros (born 1980) addresses a broad range of composition for her instrument, on this recording drawing primarily on music of the Americas. At the centre of En otra parte is music of Leo Brouwer (b. 1939), the Cuban composer who viewed the guitar as an orchestra and once declared that it has “no limits”. Brouwer’s work has been a major reference for Boros from the beginning of her musical journey. “Often I think I am holding the choice of music in my own hands,” she writes, “but later I wonder if the music has chosen me as a medium. My approach is always very intuitive; when a piece of music grips or touches me, I want to reflect it – to become a mirror and convey it.”
Boros first heard Brouwer’s “Un dia de noviembre” at a concert when she was around fifteen. Playing the piece changed, she says, the nature of her relationship to music. She studied at the Bratislava Music Conservatory, the Bela Bartok Conservatory in Budapest, and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, but gained her most important insights less through analysis than through “building up a direct relationship with every single note, every individual pitch” in a composition, through the experience of playing. “For me, pitches are like people; they have their own voices, their own durations, and yet their true character only comes to the fore in relation to other tones.”
Zsòfia Boros is the recipient of numerous awards, taking First Prizes at the North London Music Festival, the Concorso Internationale Val Tidone, the Paganini Competition in Parma, and the Premio Enrico Mercatali in Gorizia.
Boros’ choice of material uncovers affinities between music of diverse sources and intention. Her CD booklet quotes Roberto Jarroz’s “Todo comienza en otra parte” (engl.: “Everything begins somewhere else”)… From contrasts and juxtapositions a compelling album is shaped. Boros: “The stories of this album connect with one another in that they touched me with all their protagonists from the first encounter from beginning to end. I came to know them and now we are almost like old friends.”
Notes on a few of them: The programme opens with “Canción triste”, long a favourite amongst guitarists, by Francisco Calleja (1891-1950), the Spanish guitarist and composer who spent the last part of his life in Uruguay and Argentina.
“Callejón de la luna” by Spanish guitarist-composer Vicente Amigo (b. 1967) pays tribute to the spirit of flamenco: “The organization of the musical tale is less important than the feeling of it,“ says Amigo. “I can start at the end or the beginning and explore and insert many themes upon the main theme, adding little messages along the way.”
“Se ela perguntar”, a waltz by prolific guitarist-composer Dilermando Reis (1916-1977) counts now as a Brazilian standard.
Music from Argentinean sources includes “Cielo abierto” is by Quique Sinesi (b. 1960), a guitarist who has combined tango with elements of folk music, and drawn on the rhythms of candombe and milonga. In the 1980s he played extensively with Dino Saluzzi. “Te vas milongas” is from Abel Fleury (1903-1958), the composer-guitarist who loved the regional music of Buenos Aires and helped to propagate it. “Eclipse”, meanwhile, is from Argentine-born English guitarist Dominic Miller. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix, his studies in classical music and jazz also inform his work.
And Ralph Towner (born 1940), the North American composer of “Green and Golden”, needs little introduction here. His unique body of work, conventionally filed under ‘jazz’ has been greatly influenced by baroque music, contemporary composition, Brazilian music.
The composers whose work has been selected by Boros have been wanderers between worlds, musically, philosophically and geographically.
En otra parte was recorded in Lugano in 2012 and produced by Manfred Eicher.