Antonio José Martinez Palacios (1902-1936):
Sonata para Guitarra
Written in 1933, the Sonata para Guitarra by the Castilian composer Antonio José Martinez Palacios remained unpublished for nearly sixty years – and precisely until 1990. In that year, and also due to the intermediation of Spanish guitarists Gabriel Estarellas and Juan José Sáenz Gallego, Angelo Gilardino was entrusted by the composer’s heirs with the task of publishing the work. In the years he spent in Madrid, between 1920 and 1925, Antonio José got acquainted with artists such as Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. He also met the critic Josep Subirà i Puig (1882-1980), who would facilitate the national recognition of his oeuvre. Subirà would also be the only one who, after the composer’s death, would continue to mention the young master from Burgos in his writings. Even though the Catalan musicologist and impresario kept remembering him, however, a blanket of forgetfulness quickly covered the Sonata; today that blanket has been lifted, and the Sonata is now famous and is acknowledged as the most important guitar Sonata written in the Segovian era. The work is structured in four movements. The first is in the classical sonata-form, with two themes and three sections, and it is an evident proof of its composer’s mastery and skill: at no point he indulged in a slavish dependence on popular music, and he established, with his own style, new cultural and aesthetic reference standards. A delicate Minueto and a Pavana triste follow; both are like small watercolours, centered on the intimate features of the guitar’s sound; they seem to increase their already substantial specific weight if they are understood as belonging to a single thought, whereby the restrained enjoyment of the Minueto is followed by the Pavana’s reflective and plaintive pace. The fourth and last movement is a rondeau recalling the first movement’s themes, which are juxtaposed to a thrilling dance-rhythm in which the guitar technique called rasgueado is employed.
Juan Manén (1883 – 1971):
Fantasìa-Sonata Op. A=22
Joan Manén (1883-1971) was a great violinist whose career started at a very early age. His personal concept of musical composition is very far from his own activity as a concert musician: his works are worlds apart from the virtuoso or spectacular style, and they focus on a more intimate and engrossed speculation. Before he met Segovia, Manén got acquainted with the world of the guitar thanks to Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909). Alas, that was not a comforting meeting, as established beyond any reasonable doubt by the following witness: “The third and last time I saw Tárrega was in Barcelona, at his place, when I was probably twenty-two years old. A music publishing company had asked me to write a project for a pedagogical work for the guitar, in cooperation with him. We spoke at length; however, we spoke of everything but of the project which had led me there. His words revealed disillusionment, defeat, bitterness and an unconquerable dejection. He made me listen to an arrangement of a Schumann piece and he detailed a new way of attaching the strings – one which would require even more study, sacrifice, and new efforts. Delusions among so many disillusionments… Idealism among so many cruel realities… After that, I saw him no more”.
Later, the composer met with Andrés Segovia, a decidedly more charismatic figure; in 1930, the Schott publishing house printed his only guitar work, the Fantasia-Sonata. It is a unique example, within the repertoire for the six strings, of a “cyclic Sonata”: this form has its greatest expression in the B-minor Piano Sonata by Franz Liszt (1811-1886). The deep and thoughtful initial chorale – in which all the material which will be elaborated in the entire work is exposed – is followed by three sections. The first begins abruptly with an Allegro, with a rhythmic and marked spirit, where the instrument’s compass is exploited almost in its entirety the elaboration of thematic elements, even of the minimal ones, proceeds seamlessly in a constructions which never forsakes compositional elegance and skill. The second section, an Adagio cantabile, quasi in modo di un recitativo, ma in tempo is a moment of meditation and reflection. The composer proposes once more the main thematic elements, but they are metamorphosed: the warm melodic line is sustained by chords. The third and last section is a fiery Fandango whose melodic suggestions – which are similar to a vocalise – alternate with rhythmically marked sections with plaqué and rasgueados. The piece finishes with a repetition of the initial section, with a variation in the coda, and fading out to a pianissimo. The recording in this CD is based on the handwritten autograph score found by Angelo Gilardino and published in the series “The Andrés Segovia Archive” by the Bérben editions. The differences between this version and that by Segovia are numerous and concern both the melodic and the structural aspects.
Manuel Castillo (1930 – 2005):
Sonata para Guitarra
It is undoubtedly a great fortune that the pianist and composer Manuel Castillo Navarro-Aguilera (1930-2005) from Seville has been attracted by the guitar at some point of his career. His rich catalogue includes choral works, organ pieces, symphonic music and piano works; along with them, there are guitar works such as the Sonata para Guitarra (1986), the Concierto para Guitarra y Orquesta (1990), the Quinteto con guitarra (1975), Glosas del Círculo Mágico (1976), Kasidas del Alcázar (1984, for two guitars), Tres preludios (1987) and the album-leaf Vientecillo de primavera (1996). Castillo’s Sonata is dedicated to his grandfather, Pedro Aguilera: thanks to the scanty biographical information we have about him, we know that he was a guitar player whose concerts met with the critique’s approval, and who was tenderly loved by his grandson. The Sonata refrains from walking on the paths of folk music, and even from alluding to them. The chromatic treatment of the themes (both in the exposition and in the development) and a clear formal structure play beautifully with the guitar’s idiomatic features; in particular, the instrument’s timbral peculiarities are intensely highlighted. It is also easy to draw an ideal simile between this Sonata and the more famous Sonata para Piano (1972): even though the two works were written at different moments, they show evident similarities as concerns the compositional structure and the treatment of the thematic material. The first movement is preceded by an introduction exposing the thematic elements which will be developed in the three movements, as well as the intervallic rules structuring their interplay. The compositional frame is basically the classical one (exposition, development and re-exposition); and even though it does not refer to any specific key or tonal structure, it gravitates entirely around the note E. The indication cantando, added by the composer at the beginning of the second movement, and the juxtaposition of diverse figurations within the individual cells allow the performer to define clearly, from the very beginning, the interpretive principles of this brief and intense page. The thick chordal writing, purposefully designed for highlighting its almost Bartokian rhythmical features, alternates with very short monodic passages, which are mostly built on chromatic intervals. The performer’s arduous task is to balance the control of the sound with that of the timbre, without letting either prevail. The third movement abandons almost entirely the use of all of the instrument’s six strings, letting a liquid monody flow in a Presto whose regularity is occasionally interrupted by accents or changes in the rhythmic figuration. It is easy, in cases such as this, to fall in the trap of the false need for a merely technical virtuosity.
Angelo Gilardino (1941):
Sonata del Guadalquivir
Written in 2004, the Sonata del Guadalquivir is dedicated to the Italian guitarist Gianvito Pulzone. Together with the composer’s first two Sonatas, written in the Eighties, and with his Sonata Mediterranea (written in the same year as the Sonata del Guadalquivir), it represents a true manifesto. Gilardino employs a very evocative style for his first four works in the Sonata form, i.e. in a form which had suffered from an unavoidable historic obsolescence. The guitar, however, being the evocative instrument par excellence, easily manages to recall ghosts from the past, even in this form, though in modes which are obviously markedly different from those which decreed its unrivaled primacy in the classical and romantic period. The Guadalquivir is a Spanish river which crosses Granada, Cordoba and Seville. In the Roman era, it was called Baetis; its magnificence inspired the composition of several musical works, among which Manuel de Falla’s Fantasia Betica. The work is made of three movements: Memorias, Leyendas, Lejanias. The red thread which connects them is represented by topoi of the Roman, Christian, Jewish and Islamic civilizations which, in the course of the centuries, stratified over each other in Andalucia. The operation realized by the composer is not descriptive at all.
Album notes by Cristiano Porqueddu
Translation by Chiara Bertoglio