FROM ALBUM NOTES BY CARLO FIERENS:
The classical guitar went through a real process of emancipation in the XX century. From the suffocating world of the guitar societies and home concerts, it has found itself well established in the primary stages of music, attracting more massive crowds and prompting recognized composers to write for it. This album (whose tracks are recorded entirely live) wants to offer a glimpse on that Copernican revolution, with some of its highest products. Undoubtedly, the whole history of the instrument in the past century would not have been the same if it wasn’t for one of its most important figures of all time, the Spanish virtuoso Andrés Segovia. One of the cornerstones of his mission in promoting the guitar to always higher stages was to have some of the most recognized composers writing for it, escaping from the trap of the repertoire composed by guitarist-composers. In the context of this endeavor, the genre of the Sonata is significant as a symbol of that ‘high’ music precluded to guitar for centuries. Segovia was eager to get out of that sense of inferiority, and he was very pleased to have sonatas composed for him. The opening of this album presents one of the highest achievements of this effort, the Omaggio a Boccherini (the title itself appears to be Segovia’s idea) by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. […]