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Castelnuovo-Tedesco -
   'Music for Two Guitars - 1'
By Christopher M. Wright
  © 2009 Christopher M. Wright
  All Rights Reserved

Here's a sunny, optimistic album, full of unexpected harmonic twists and turns. A number of the pieces are fugues in which the main theme is repeated in a second voice while the first voice continues in counterpoint.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who was born in Florence, met Spanish guitar legend André s Segovia at a music festival in 1932. The Italian went on to compose more than a hundred works for guitar. He left Italy in 1939 after Mussolini's anti-Jewish Manifesto of Race, a race law similar to the one in effect in Nazi Germany at the time. Even prior to that measure, Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music was dropped from radio play and concert performances of his works were cancelled. Arturo Toscanini sponsored him for U.S. immigration. Castelnuovo-Tedesco settled in California, worked on 200 film scores, and taught film music greats Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith, among others. Castelnuovo's orchestral music was championed by no less a musical figure than Jascha Heifetz.

Some of the melodies on 'Two Guitars' are mind-expanding, not quite like anything you've heard before (e.g., Fugue No. 6 in F sharp major). The tone is mostly sweet, the use of dissonance rare.

The performers on this album, the Brasil Guitar Duo, won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in 2006 and has played Carnegie Hall. The playing is expressive throughout with little very fret noise, one hallmark of a good guitarist. Sonically as well as compositionally, the album is a joy.

Notes on Volume 2 -

 The Brasil Guitar Duo's recording of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Music for Two Guitars, an AIM Discovery, is now complete with the release of Volume 2. AIM's picks are in the player below.

 

© 2009 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved - This material may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten, redistributed, resold, or manipulated in any form.

CDs -    Vol 1                         Vol 2