Great Guitarists • Andrés Segovia (1893-1987)
Vol. 2: Original 1946-1949 Recordings
Bach's so-called works for lute still provoke debate and controversy.
That he loved the sound of the lute cannot be doubted. He may not have played
it; as a greatly skilled keyboard player, he would have felt more at home with
the Lautenwerk, a hybrid keyboard instrument he is known to have
possessed. Strung with gut strings, it sounded like a lute, and it is possible
that the 'lute' works were written for this instrument. Certainly the series of
low-register spread chords in the Prelude in C minor suggest that Bach
at least had the lute in mind. Whatever instrument it was written for, it made
an ideal piece for Segovia to take into his repertoire.
Segovia described the impact Bach's music made on him by comparing it to a
gigantic tree, so tall that (an Andalusian exaggeration) 'it took two men to
look at it'. A well-worked out fugue does indeed have a certain dimension, and
the Fugue in G minor is no exception. Bach himself made the
transcription from the second movement of his Sonata [No. 1] for unaccompanied
violin, BWV 1001, the first of three sonatas for that form and dating from Bach's
period at Cöthen, a particularly productive time for his instrumental music.
The sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin and the
sonatas for unaccompanied cello have proved to be fruitful ground for
guitarists who, taking their cue from Bach himself, have not hesitated to
transcribe his instrumental works. Segovia's landmark recording of the Chaconne
from Bach's D minor Partita [BWV 1004] was a notable example
of what could be achieved. The cellist Pablo Casals had already discovered the
suites for unaccompanied cello and by performing them with his unique powers of
expression had, practically single-handedly, reversed the old custom of playing
Bach as a kind of mechanical exercise. This set the scene for the particular
emotional qualities of the guitar.
Segovia first performed the Chaconne in Paris in 1935. The public
response was enthusiastic, and almost at once it became an essential repertoire
work. One of greatest sets of variations ever composed. It remains a perpetual
challenge for guitarists and violinists alike.
Only a fraction of the enormous output of the Brazilian
composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is ever played. His guitar music is an
exception, forming an important and substantial part of the guitarist's repertoire.
The twelve Etudes have a historical significance: for the first time,
the guitar fingerboard was liberated from the tonal restrictions of music based
mainly on the keys of E, A and D (the notes to which the three lowest strings
are normally tuned). To play the Etudes of Villa-Lobos requires a
mastery of every key, something that a good pianist or violinist takes for granted
but a technique that guitarists generally did not get round to until well into
the 20th century. Segovia did not play all the Etudes but, as was his custom,
selected the ones he liked best. In any case his feelings about Villa-Lobos
were ambivalent; he did not embrace his music with the warmth he showed to Ponce, Moreno Torroba and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, even though he recognised its significance
in the contemporary scene.
Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982) was the first composer
to respond to Segovia's request for new guitar music, and the two men remained
close friends throughout their long lives. Moreno Torroba already had a
reputation as a composer of orchestral music, and was a noted exponent of the zarzuela,
the traditional Spanish form of comic opera. Over the years he wrote many works
for Segovia's guitar, of which the three-movement Suite Castellana is a
fine example: a markedly national style, based on traditional music from
central Spain, given a light and lyrical touch by Moreno Torroba's skilful
hand. In Arada, the first of the two movements played here, he seems to
be looking back in nostalgia to the golden age of Spanish romanticism, as
personified by Albéniz and Granados.
Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) was a pianist and conductor besides
being a prominent composer. Like Falla, he studied composition in Paris, but a
meeting there with his compatriots Falla and Albéniz determined his subsequent
career as a composer of national Spanish music. The guitar formed part of that
pattern, and he wrote several pieces for it, which he dedicated to Segovia. He was not a guitarist, however, and the great guitarist had to change one or two
notes in order to fit his fingerboard. Segovia remained unswerving in his admiration
of Turina's musical values, and Fandanguillo, written in 1925, became
one of his favourite pieces. Full of instrumental techniques such as pizzicato,
harmonics and the particular guitar technique of tambor (a drum effect
obtained by striking the strings near the bridge), it manages to compress into
less than four minutes the essence of Spanish dance with the dramatic contrasts
associated with Andalusian flamenco, memorably tinged with the impressionistic colouring
Turina had acquired during his studies in France.
Segovia's first request to Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) for a guitar
concerto had not been taken up by the composer, who doubted the guitar's ability
to mix with orchestral instruments. Instead, in 1936, he wrote the short Tarantella,
a light and rhythmic piece with suggestions of Rossini, something that he knew
the guitar could do very well.
The Mexican composer Manuel María Ponce (1886-1948) met Segovia while he was studying with Paul Dukas in Paris. His warm romanticism and a notable
gift for melody (his song Estrellita became a world best-seller)
attracted Segovia, who encouraged him to write for the guitar. Sonatina
Meridional was only partly the 'Spanish' work that Segovia had wanted, its
outer movements being distinctly Mexican in flavour. Only the central movement,
Copla, can be said to evoke Spain, its essentially vocal content having
the feel of Andalusian flamenco.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco began his first Guitar Concerto in
a mood of optimism inspired by a visit to Florence by Segovia in 1938. It was a
time of political turbulence, and the composer was soon to find himself uprooted
from his beloved Italy by Mussolini's anti-Jewish activities. He settled in Hollywood, after being assured by his friend the violinist Jascha Heifetz that he could
find work in motion pictures. Segovia too had alleviated his despair, managing
to convince him that his creative talent would enable him to start a successful
new life in America. He found work in plenty, and in fact became better known
for his film music (which he called his 'vegetable garden') than for his 'flower
garden', into which category his three guitar concertos fall.
The first movement, written in a single sitting, is in Castelnuovo-Tedesco's
neo-classical style, lightly orchestrated and clear almost to the point of simplicity.
The classical Italian composer Boccherini was apparently in his mind. The Andantino
alla romanza that follows can be interpreted as a touching farewell to the
Tuscan countryside that he loved so well and would soon be leaving. The
concluding Ritmico e cavalleresco may reflect the composer's Iberian
antecedents, but is more likely to be a recognition of the Spanishness of its first
performer, Andrés Segovia. The work was first performed in Montevideo in 1939.
In a letter to Manuel Ponce, Segovia paid tribute to Castelnuovo-Tedesco's
choice of themes, and his development of them without obscuring the quiet voice
of the guitar (Segovia would never have considered electrical amplification:
his solution to problems of balance would have been to move the orchestra
back). He felt that the guitar part could have had more brilliance, but that
did not diminish his praise for the concerto, which he called 'a very ingenious
and successful work'.
Colin Cooper
