Classical guitar

Hey Carl...actually, compared to piano/violin music, the body of works for the classic guitar is pretty small...and unfortunately, I feel a lot of it is pretty weak compared to those instruments. Some of the best, I feel, are: the Villa Lobos Etudes, Preludes, and guitar concerto; Takemitsu's "Folios" is a masterpiece, and his other pieces are great as well; Britten's "Nocturnal" is generally regarded as the greatest work yet written for guitar, and it is superb; Hans Werner Henze's "Royal Winter Music" is also a masterpiece; Richard Rodney Bennett wrote some hip stuff; and there are many more contemporary composers now writing interesting things. Julian Bream is perhaps the greatest of the classical guitar maestros, but his stuff is hard to find; many of the masterworks were written for him, and if you can find them, it's well worth it. John Williams also is a very progressive player, and has recorded a lot of Brouwer and Takemitsu. And, there's a great series on Naxos of guitar competition winners that often features some interesting modern stuff.

Segovia dominated the classic guitar scene for a long time, and a lot of the players that followed him performed what came to be called "the Segovia repertoire," works by Ponce (great concerto), Torroba, Turina, Tarrega, Sor, Tedesco, Rodrigo (Concerto de Aranjuez, a masterpiece) and Albeniz...there are some nice pieces for sure, but it was Bream that moved things forward with his "20th Century Guitar" album (out of print). Eliot Fisk and Kazuhito Yamashita are two contemporary maestros well worth a listen; Yamashita's Bach playing is incomparable (and Fisk ain't too bad either); Fisk's CD of Rochberg's "Caprice Variations" is superb, as is the writing. GSP in San Francisco has a lot of great and hard to find CD's, they're on the net. And Xuefei Yang's CD "Si JI" is one of the best in tears, great writing and playing. Post privately if you have any questions, best...Hstick (oh yeah, John Schneider always does interesting non 12 eq stuff, and Wim Hoogewerf has some CD's that are excellent too, don't know how to find them)

myspace.com/microstick

Thanks for the recommendations, Neil!

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, <microstick@...> wrote:
>
> Hey Carl...actually, compared to piano/violin music, the body of
works for the classic guitar is pretty small...and unfortunately, I
feel a lot of it is pretty weak compared to those instruments. Some
of the best, I feel, are: the Villa Lobos Etudes, Preludes, and
guitar concerto; Takemitsu's "Folios" is a masterpiece, and his other
pieces are great as well; Britten's "Nocturnal" is generally regarded
as the greatest work yet written for guitar, and it is superb; Hans
Werner Henze's "Royal Winter Music" is also a masterpiece; Richard
Rodney Bennett wrote some hip stuff; and there are many more
contemporary composers now writing interesting things. Julian Bream
is perhaps the greatest of the classical guitar maestros, but his
stuff is hard to find; many of the masterworks were written for him,
and if you can find them, it's well worth it. John Williams also is a
very progressive player, and has recorded a lot of Brouwer and
Takemitsu. And, there's a great series on Naxos of guitar competition
winners that often features some interesting modern stuff.
>
> Segovia dominated the classic guitar scene for a long time, and
a lot of the players that followed him performed what came to be
called "the Segovia repertoire," works by Ponce (great concerto),
Torroba, Turina, Tarrega, Sor, Tedesco, Rodrigo (Concerto de
Aranjuez, a masterpiece) and Albeniz...there are some nice pieces for
sure, but it was Bream that moved things forward with his "20th
Century Guitar" album (out of print). Eliot Fisk and Kazuhito
Yamashita are two contemporary maestros well worth a listen;
Yamashita's Bach playing is incomparable (and Fisk ain't too bad
either); Fisk's CD of Rochberg's "Caprice Variations" is superb, as
is the writing. GSP in San Francisco has a lot of great and hard to
find CD's, they're on the net. And Xuefei Yang's CD "Si JI" is one of
the best in tears, great writing and playing. Post privately if you
have any questions, best...Hstick (oh yeah, John Schneider always
does interesting non 12 eq stuff, and Wim Hoogewerf has some CD's
that are excellent too, don't know how to find them)
>
> myspace.com/microstick
>