[ Naxos / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 14 April 2023
Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 4 - 7 business days.
Between 1953 and 1967, the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a series of Greeting Cards. These 52 musical folios, 21 of which were written for the guitar - an instrument that had inspired him since he first heard Segovia perform - are pen portraits of admired colleagues. Castelnuovo-Tedesco's imagination and technical mastery are reinforced by the use of rhythms associated with the dedicatees' nationality or through evocations inspired by their names. The cycle offers a surprising, generous and rewarding body of musical cryptology that belies its small-scale form.
Recorded: 17-19 April 2022 at St. Paul's Anglican Church, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
"He wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, and taught composition to Andre Previn, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini and John Williams, but Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is largely a musical footnote in other people's stories. Except in the classical guitar world. He composed something like 100 works for the instrument, mostly beautiful miniatures that sound easy but are fiendishly difficult to play. Here, Italian guitarist Andrea de Vitis posts 21 of the composer's Greeting Cards - musical portraits of friends, colleagues, admired artists - into one superbly performed album." Richard Betts NZ Listener 2023
52 Greeting Cards, Op. 170 - the 21 pieces for guitar (1954-67)