This recording (January 19-21, 2019) assembles three combinations of plucked and bowed strings, by composers who shared an Italian heritage and Spanish cultural affinities. All the pieces extend what had been originally the lute tradition; and even the most contemporary of the composers, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), called himself an “anti-modernist.” His 1939 Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet, written for virtuoso Andres Segovia, represents one of the first modern examples of this chamber music genre, a work in a genial, folk style, affectionate in its use of Spanish scalar effects and habanera rhythm.
Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto, here transcribed for guitar, is a product of his travel to Prague, in Bohemia, c. 1730. In this arrangement by Emilio Pujol, the viola takes the second violin part. The middle movement Largo has gained a renown of its own, often appearing in dream-sequences in film.
Joaquin Turina (1882-1949) composed his La oracion del Torero (The Bullfighter’s Prayer) in 1925 for lute quartet. The piece captures the concentrated intimacy and piety of a prayer in an incense-filled chapel, where considerations of mortality occupy the toreador’s thoughts.
Italian composer Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) absorbed the flamenco style of Spain, even while cultivating Italian and French styles into his significant number of compositions. He wrote his Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D Major in 1798, one of some dozen he created for Francois de Borgia of Benavente, a Spanish nobleman who had mastered the guitar. Boccherini himself was a master cellist, and his cello concertos, too, occupy a large part of the modern repertory. The most famous movement of this popular work is the last, the Fandango, in festive colors, supported by the strings and castanets.