Music for Cello and Guitar - From South America and East Europe

Dúo Villa-Lobos

8.573761

Five works emanating from South America and Eastern Europe composed in the last thirty years for the rather unusual ensemble texture of a cello and guitar duo. All belong to the world where tonality and atonality freely mix, and, in the main, the guitar assumes the role of a keyboard in the more conventional cello and piano duo.
The most recent and extended work comes from the Colombian guitarist/composer Edwin Guevara, the Fantasy formed from three pictures of places in Colombia and Spain, the notes with the disc explaining their location. More than most, this work does give an independent role for the guitar, the cello singing melodiously both in solo and duo passages, and musically dances around the guitar in the final Latin-American rhythms.
We jump back almost thirty years to 1986 with the catchy tunes of the Bolivian-born composer, Jaime Zenamon, in the three short Reflexoes elegant and vivacious dances. Eleven years later the Yugoslav guitarist, Dušan Bogdanović completed his Quatre pieces intimes, a strange title for four outgoing pieces and often with an unusual rhythmic gait. Finally two pieces from the outset of the present century with music from Sérgio Assad, one half of the famous Brazilian guitar-playing brothers. Often in a dialogue between the performers, Jobiniana comes from the world of smoky nightclubs where the performers improvise. With many competition awards for his guitar playing, the Bulgarian, Atanas Ourkouzounov, completed Tanzologia in 2000, its three movements in dance time.
The performances from the Venezuelan cellist, Cecilia Palma, and Colombian guitarist, Edwin Guevara, are most engaging in a very well recorded and easy-to-listen to disc. • © 2017 David’s Review Corner

CD x 1

Naxos

29.05.17

747313376179