The guitar legacy of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) stands at well over one hundred works, a highly significant proportion of his compositional output. He was one of the first generation of nonguitarist guitar composers, most of whom were drawn to the instrument by Andrés Segovia as part of his the Spanish virtuoso’s endeavour to ennoble and to dignify the status of his preferred instrument alongside instruments such as the piano, violin and cello that commanded such high public respect.
 

Alongside Federico Moreno-Torroba (1891-1982), Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999), Manuel Ponce (1882- 1948), and Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), Castelnuovo-Tedesco was to become recognised as one of the
great twentieth-century contributors to the guitar. One of the notable differences between Castelnuovo-Tedesco and this group of contemporaries born in the last two decades of the nineteenth-century or just after was that he was neither Spanish nor Latin American, although his Jewish ancestors had moved to Tuscany from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. Although proudly Italian, the Florentine Castelnuovo-Tedesco also continually reaffirmed pride in his ancestral heritage in many of his musical works and other writings. It is more than fanciful to suppose that his attraction to the guitar may well have had it roots in an ancestral nostalgia that lay deep within him.

RELEASE DATE: 2022

Item#: CR202201

Barcode: 8435383688620
Artists: José Luis Puerta & Alfredo Vázquez.
Label: Contrastes Records
Genre: Classical