I’ve been listening to new pieces (i.e., new to me) for two years now, and I don’t think I’ve listened to a work for guitar yet. I could be wrong, and maybe I just don’t remember, but I believe this is the first work for guitar I’ve listened to on this site.
I selected the Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra by Heitor Villa-Lobos at random, a piece written for the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia, to whom the score is dedicated. I found this information on Wikipedia: “Initially in three movements and titled Fantasia concertante, Villa-Lobos later added a cadenza at Segovia's request, and changed the title to Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. According to another version of the story, the situation was quite the reverse: Segovia commissioned the work with the stipulation that there should be no cadenza and the work be titled Fantasia concertante. Villa-Lobos, however, ignored these demands, supplying an extended cadenza and insisting the work be called a concerto.” (The complete article is HERE). No matter the case, Andrés Segovia first performed the concerto in February 1956 in Houston, Texas, with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer. Wikipedia lists four movements for the piece as follows:
However, when I first listened to the concerto, I did so on Spotify, and the album I found with the work performed by Narciso Yepes and the London Symphony Orchestra listed just three movements:
The Wikipedia article states this: “The cadenza is in four unmetered sections with different tempo markings (Quasi allegro – Andante – Quasi allegro – Poco moderato), and is so substantial in length that it functions as a separate movement.” (I added the underline.) Sooo…later I went back to the video I linked above on Youtube – with the concerto performed by Julian Bream and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by André Previn – to listen to the “third movement,” i.e., the cadenza. The concerto is certainly pleasant and makes absolutely wonderful background music – so having said that, I suspect you can guess my rating gravitated to the lower end of my scale. Yes, the concerto is okay – but it’s not in the same league (at least to me) as some of the “greats,” like the concertos in C Major and D Major by Vivaldi, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo, and others. Mysterious chords a la a Bernard Herrmann score for an Alfred Hitchcock thriller open the first movement. Even the guitar line close to a minute-and-a-half in reminded me a bit of the soundtrack for “Vertigo.” Later the movement slows down, and it sounds more folksy and melancholic. The second movement continues the melancholy mood, and this movement has perhaps the most memorable melody line in the piece – though again, it doesn’t quite reach the level of greatness of the other concertos mentioned above. It does come close. The third movement (not the cadenza – so the fourth movement in the video linked above) opens at a faster pace and ties in elements from the earlier movements (as does the cadenza when I listened to that), but nothing about the movement is particularly memorable. Overall, the concerto is charming and pleasant to listen to – and the opening theme to the second movement does approach the greatness of other guitar concertos – but it’s just not enough to carry this entire piece for me.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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