Barrios-Mangoré, "Sueño en la Floresta"

One of the main disadvantages in the composition and performance of classical guitar music is the short duration of string vibration, which makes the notes carried by a melody not long enough, contrary to what a violin or any bowed string instrument is able to produce by the simple expedient of passing the full extension of the bow over the string and, if necessary, pass it again in the opposite direction.

The tremolo
This disadvantage of the classical guitar was solved by the tremolo technique, born in the Romantic period and that the Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega brought to its climax in the second half of the 19th century, leaving it embodied until the end of time in the very popular work Recuerdos de La Alhambra, composed in 1896.

The technique, whose purpose is to extend the duration of the notes that make up the melody, basically consists of the repetition of a note using the ring, middle and index fingers, accompanied by the thumb that carries a bass resting on the lowest strings. The uniformity and regularity with which the three repeated notes are played is the key to the creation of an exquisite tremolo.

Agustín Barrios-Mangoré (1885 - 1944)

Barrios-Mangoré
As Tárrega did for Spain in the previous century, the Paraguayan composer and classical guitarist of Guaraní origin, Agustín Barrios-Mangoré forged in the first half of the 20th century one of the most extensive guitar productions in Latin America, combining the classical European tradition with the melodies and rhythms of popular Latin American musical forms.

An extraordinary guitarist, he made excellent use of the tremolo technique with short works such as El Último Trémolo – which turned out to be his last composition –, and the one presented here, the somewhat longer Un Sueño en la Floresta, in an outstanding rendition by the Scottish-born artist David Russell.

Tchaikovsky, "Romeo & Juliet" Overture

Despite his recurrent depressive episodes, before he was 35 years old Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky had definitively consolidated a career as a composer in Tsarist Russia. Between 1869 – when he was 29 –and 1875, a good number of his best works were released, including the popular Piano Concerto
No. 1, the Second and Third Symphonies, and the overture Romeo and Juliet, the first of his three works of descriptive music based on Shakespeare's dramas. The Tempest would follow, and much later, Hamlet.

First version
Setting to music the immortal tragedy of the lovers of Verona was certainly a good idea. His first intention was to write an opera, but his friend and advisor, Mili Balakirev, leader of the renowned group The Five, thought it would work better as an instrumental drama. To that end, he offered some advice, suggesting the scenes to be worked out and even the key in which they should be written. Too many suggestions for the highly self-critical author that Tchaikovsky was. He only half-heartedly listened. The premiere, in March 1870, went almost unnoticed.

Second version
When, some time later, he learned that the work had been whistled in Vienna and coldly received in Paris, he forced himself to take a closer look at the profuse correspondence exchanged with Balakirev. He wrote a second version, and hastened to publish it. Balakirev agreed that it had improved, but warned that it would have been better to keep it unpublished for a long enough time to await new ideas.

Tchaikovsky, in 1878
(1840 - 1893)

Third version - Fantasy Overture

The leader of The Five was right. Ten years later, Pyotr Ilyich wrote the third version, adding to it the subtitle "Overture-Fantasy". It is the one that today is performed on the stages of the world, surpassing in popularity, by far, the versions that in their time other authors – Berlioz and Prokofiev – made of the tragic love story of Juliet and her Romeo. The work lasts just under 20 min.

In popular culture
The various arrangements of the popular love theme (scene on the balcony: minute 7:45) are counted by the dozen, as well as its presence in the most diverse films and TV shows: in more than one episode it accompanied the never-ending and never-ended love affair between Doña Florinda and Professor Jirafales, in the Mexican series El Chavo del Ocho.

The performance is by The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk, a Russian conductor based in Finland with a Finnish citizenship.

Villa-Lobos, Five Preludes for guitar

In addition to being a skilled amateur guitarist, Heitor Villa-Lobos' father was a man of broad culture and uncommon intelligence. For years he worked as an official of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro, and at the time of his death in 1899, he left no great possessions, except for a vast and expensive library that his son Heitor would be forced to sell to feed the fatherless family when the future composer was only twelve years old.

In the streets of Rio
At the beginning of the 20th century, Rio de Janeiro was far from being the metropolis we know today. But music flooded its streets even during the day. And in the evenings, after having participated in some party, or dance, wedding, or carnival, groups of young musicians would roam the streets making music, taking a break to enter a bar here and then another so that the mood would not wane.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was part of these bands of young musicians and it was in the street where he made his first guitar playing, in addition to numerous bohemian friendships, because any volume from his father's library was also enough for several drinks.

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959)

Brazil and Paris
Reluctant to receive formal musical education, between the ages of 18 and 25 Villa-Lobos made extensive trips throughout Brazil, collecting songs and getting to know the main characteristic styles of autochthonous music. By 1923 he was already a renowned composer in his homeland. So, the Brazilian government agreed to grant him a scholarship to travel to Europe so that he could get to know other worlds and other music. He lived in Paris until 1930, receiving the recognition and admiration of the musical celebrities of the time, including the famous Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia, to whom he dedicated much of his guitar work.

Five Preludes for guitar
Apparently, there were originally six of them and one was either lost or never published. Composed in 1940 at Segovia's request, they are dedicated to Mindinha, his wife, Arminda Villa-Lobos. They are a clear example of the fusion of styles that characterizes Villa-Lobos' guitar work: Brazilian popular music and classical European tradition.

Its parts, or movements, with a subtitle added by Villa-Lobos, are:

00       Prelude No. 1 in E minor ("Melodia lírica"): Andantino espressivo-Più mosso

04:20  Prelude No. 2 in E major ("Melodia capadócia"): Andantino-Più mosso

07:02  Prelude No. 3 in A minor ("Homenagem a Bach"): Andante-Molto adagio e dolorido

12:40  Prelude No. 4 in E minor ("Homenagem ao índio brasileiro"): Lento-Animato-Moderato

16:02  Prelude No. 5 in D major ("Homenagem à Vida Social"): Poco animato-Meno-Più mosso

The rendition is by the Greek artist Evangelo Assimakopoulos.

Johann Pachelbel, Canon in D major

As one might expect, the German organist and composer Johann Pachelbel, born in Nuremberg in 1653, did more in life than just write his highly acclaimed Canon in D major. Pachelbel, indeed, was a key figure of the Baroque period and his work was an important contribution to the development of sacred and keyboard music in the German Lutheran Church. 

For many years he lived in Vienna, where he became acquainted with the work of the Italian Frescobaldi, which greatly influenced his choral preludes, which in turn inspired the music of the same genre by Johann Sebastian Bach, whose parents Pachelbel met in Eisenach while serving as court organist there in 1677, eight years before Johann Sebastian came into the world.

Johann Pachelbel (1653 - 1706)

Oblivion and rediscovery

Pachelbel, like many other baroque musicians, was a very popular composer in his time. And like so many others in the history of music – Bach himself, for example – he remained forgotten for centuries.

But in the mid-sixties of the twentieth century, violinist and conductor Rudolph Baumgartner and the Swiss Lucerne Festival Strings recorded a baroque piece called Pachelbel's Canon for France's Erato. It was a canon and a gigue by Pachelbel composed around 1700. Surprisingly, within a short time, the piece had become a best-seller.

Canon in D major

A few years later, actor Robert Redford used the piece as part of the soundtrack for the film with which he made his directorial debut, 1980's Ordinary People. As a result, Pachelbel's Canon became for a short period the most popular classical piece of all time.

From that date until today, the various versions are counted by the hundreds, and there are versions for all tastes and for every conceivable instrument or set of instruments.

We are presenting here the San Francisco Early Music Ensemble "Voices of Music", with period instruments and the original ensemble, for three violins and basso continuo.

Chopin, Waltz in A flat, Op 42

In the summer of 1840, the singular family formed by Chopin, the writer George Sand and her children, Solange and Maurice, could not repeat what had happened the previous year when they packed their belongings and left to enjoy three months of well-deserved rest in the summer house that Sand kept in Nohant, 200 km south of Paris. This time there was no budget, since the last work of the tireless and prolific writer had turned out to be a failure, and there was no way to pay for the three-month stay at the summer house, at four thousand francs a month, not counting travel expenses.

Summer in Paris
So they remained in Paris. George Sand would edit and rewrite her works, and Chopin, who had already begun to get used to composing only in Nohant, would have to readjust his routine and work in Paris during the summer. Otherwise, he had no pupils during those months. And despite the unusual circumstances, 1840 was a fruitful year, a year of uninterrupted work at 16 Rue Pigalle. For example, the Fantasia in F minor, and the sinuous Waltz in A flat, opus 42, published that same year without a dedication, date from that date.

Waltz in A flat, opus 42
Robert Schumann, an enthusiastic admirer of Chopin and who had already spoken highly of the Etude opus 25 No. 1, wrote of this waltz that "if it were ever to be danced, only the countesses would have to do it". We do not understand what he really meant, perhaps that it required extreme elegance to do so.
The superimposition of a binary rhythm in the right hand and a ternary rhythm in the left hand in the main theme, together with the speed here infused by Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky, make the dance impracticable even for the countesses. A scintillating coda (2:37) brings the little piece to a close, crowned by vigorous unison notes in the low register.