Sanz - Complete Music for Guitar | Brilliant Classics 95396

Sanz - Complete Music for Guitar

Label: Brilliant Classics

Cat No: 95396

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Instrumental

Release Date: 22nd June 2018

Contents

About

Composer, theorist and guitarist Gaspar Sanz was born in Calanda in Aragón in 1640, and in 1674, in Zaragoza, he published the first edition of his Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española (Musical Instruction for the Spanish Guitar), containing numerous compositions. Sanz’s music reveals him to have been a key figure in bridging two different musical traditions – the Spanish and the Italian. We know from his own testimony that music from outside Spain was being performed in Zaragoza in his lifetime, and the cultural influence of Austria, with its leanings for the Italian style, would also have been felt in the city at that time.

His book, at once a collection of music and a method, was addressed to both aficionados and beginners, as well as professional musicians. It contains practical and innovative advice on harmony, counterpoint and continuo practice for accompanying soloists and dancers, his vast musical knowledge and creativity demonstrated in numerous original compositions and national and foreign songs. While the origins of the latter lie in the folk tradition, by the time Sanz published the Instrucción de música, these had already long been part of the art music from which Sanz drew his inspiration. Having travelled the continent extensively, much of his musical education took place in Italy, and he would have encountered these songs and dances there in instrumental versions.

Italian classical guitarist Alberto Mesirca was hailed as ‘prodigiously talented’ in Classical Guitar Magazine, and Kenneth Keaton of American Record Guide praised his album of Scarlatti Sonatas as ‘the best Scarlatti I’ve heard on solo guitar’. He is a two-time winner of the “Golden Guitar” Award: for Best Recording in 2007 and as Best Upcoming Artist of the Year in 2009.

With this two-CD set, he has recorded all of Sanz’s punteado (plucked) music for guitar, together with the corresponding rasgueado (strummed) parts or dances. He includes his own arrangements of the dances ‘La tarantela’ and ‘Baile de Mantua’, which Sanz published in strummed versions only.

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