On this latest release in the Guitar Laureate series, Georgi Dimitrov-Jojo, winner of the 2022 European Bach Guitar Award, presents a selection of works transcribed for guitar from the rich repertoire of Johann Sebastian Bach. Dimitrov-Jojo’s beautiful sound and poetic interpretations bring an intimate connection to Bach’s boundless imagination, crowned in this substantial programme by the famous Ciaconna, BWV 1004.

Born in Torino in 1967, Alfredo Franco was involved in non-classical music in his youth before taking up the classical guitar. He then undertook advanced studies in the historical and critical fields in the Department for Art, Music and Theatre of the University of Turin. He would later abandon concert activity as a performer and focus instead on composition. His now prolific classical guitar output has been well received by important interpreters such as Cristiano Porqueddu and increasingly programmed on the stage and in the studio.

Guitarist from Rome, Marina Tomei is among all the most active young Italian guitarists in the world music scene.

Leading Australian guitarist Ken Murray performs the music of celebrated composer Christopher Sainsbury in this musical journey across the Australian landscape.

The first disc in this two-CD set contains Sardinian composer Cristiano Porqueddu’s first three sonatas for solo guitar, written between 2013 and 2019 and performed here by his compatriot Riccardo D’Alò. ‘Des couleurs sur la toile’, in three movements, pays homage to the painter Gesuino Curreli, the composer’s maternal uncle, who paints landscapes of contemporary Oliena, a town in northern Sardinia. ‘Sonata di Picerno’ – completed in 2015 and dedicated to Italian guitarist Christian Saggese – is a musical portrait of the distinctive town of Picerno in the beautiful Basilicata region of Italy. All three of its movements narrate an entirely fictional leyenda (legend). Sonata No.3, ‘Il rito del fuoco’, is based on an ancient Sardinian legend that tells of Saint Anthony and his pig stealing fire from hell to give to humanity. It is a cyclical composition, which remains anchored in the harmonic and thematic elements introduced in the first section throughout.

One of the greatest guitarists of his generation, Petrit Çeku guides us on Moments Musicaux, a wonderful journey through Schubert’s inner world.

This album presents the complete solo works for guitar by two Catalan contemporaries, the cellist Gaspar Cassadó and the pianist Federico Mompou. Cassadó wrote six guitar works connected to his friendship with Andrés Segovia, mostly based on folk elements such as the sardana, a traditional Catalan circle dance. In Mompou’s works for guitar, the influence of his mysticism and attachment to Catalan folklore are undeniable. He composed primarily for piano but he also wrote three pieces for guitar, notably Suite compostelana for Segovia. The hypnotic, austere and lyrical elements in this work distil Mompou’s compositional genius.

Hermann Ambrosius is counted in the movement of Austro-German impressionist composers who defined a peculiar niche of twentieth-century German guitar music: distant from the tendencies of the Vienna school and inspired by the Debussian school, their writing has diluted and languid hues in its research, with atmospheres and colors that do not dare more than necessary, maintaining only echoes of the dreamlike, transfigured and visionary idea of Ravel and his companions.

Summits of the violin repertory, Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin have always fascinated performers and music lovers alike for their architectural perfection, their spiritual content and the breadth of their emotional palette. It is therefore not surprising that, like so many of Bach’s works, they have been constantly arranged for other instruments. On a purely practical level, there are elements in the writing of these works that seem to suit the guitar particularly well, with its polyphony, melody, dynamics and sound colours that lend themselves particularly well to the complexity of works that seem to go beyond the solo violin.

It took a long time for the guitar to enter and establish itself in contemporary music. Yet the piece that marked its entry into the 20th century was a very modern one: the Tombeau that Manuel De Falla dedicated in 1922 to Claude Debussy was pioneering at the time. The instrument had everything it needed to be ‘modern’: a small, but captivating chamber music sonority, a glorious past (at least in the then half­forgotten noble ancestor, the lute, whose place it took), and a technique still evolving and ready to be explored. However, despite Schönberg’s use of the guitar as early as 1924 in his Serenade, mainly owing to Andrés Segovia – the main architect of the instrument’s renaissance in the 20th century, who long dominated the scene with his own predilections and idiosyncrasies –, the repertoire remained linguistically linked to that debut moment until the 1970s: modern, but no longer contemporary.

Jonathan Bockelmann is back with the second installment of his ongoing series „Sakamoto on Guitar“, a tribute to the deceased Japanese composer. „Suite for Krug in 2008“ is a piece commissioned by the champagne brand “Krug”. Each of the three “Movements” is intended to be paired with one of their wines. Jonathan’s stripped-down arrangement for guitar takes the piano and all the lush and bubbly synths of the original and decants them into a fine blend of flageolets and arpeggios, masterfully combining the different layers of the composition on his instrument.

After his much-lauded debut ‘Childish Mind’, classical guitarist Jonathan Bockelmann pays tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto with a series of innovative arrangements of pieces by the Japanese composer.

In the folk tradition: The Duo Ausma – comprising Vizma Zvaigzne (mezzo-soprano) and Theduardo Prasetyo (guitar) – interprets songs by Franz Schubert, Manuel de Falla, and Xavier Montsalvatge on their new GENUIN album in their unique way. The two musicians explore the boundaries of the concept of "homeland": In the songs of the great Catalan composer Montsalvatge, who mixes Caribbean sounds with the music of his homeland and the tonal languages of the 20th century, as well as in those of Schubert. The early Romantic treasures of the latter, accompanied by guitars, take on an unusual color, evoking the intimacy of the Viennese Schubertiades in our mind's eye.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is one of the most fascinating figures of Italian twentieth-century music, but, unfortunately, his works are not as frequently performed as they would deserve and his figure lacks the worldwide recognition it merits. Notwithstanding this, it is safe to affirm that Castelnuovo-Tedesco stands out as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century and one who was able to develop a highly original language in fervent dialogue with all the major trends of his era, but also without being overwhelmingly influenced by them.

In his arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, guitarist Walter Feybli has endeavored to stay as close as possible to the original and to combine the pieces harmoniously. He deliberately chose those variations whose character is reminiscent of suite movements and which sound as natural on the guitar as if they were played on the piano as originally intended.