Vadan Records Releases The Silver Guitar!
Nov. 28, 2009
(DALLAS) — Vadan Records released today Ernesto García de León’s music in its latest recording The Silver Guitar. Ernesto García de León is represented on this recording by two different works. The Silver Guitar, Op.56 dates from 2001 and has a tragic story. One of García de León' students at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, Noe Garcia Alcaraz, commissioned a set of twenty studies that he would perform in his graduating recital in 1998. García de León wrote the work (20 Studies, Op. 50) and the recital went off without a hitch. As a present for the occasion and for his professorial guidance, Noe presented García de León with a small silver guitar. This piece had been made by artisans in Alcaraz’s home city of Taxco, famous for its silver mines, silver jewelry and crafts, in whose traditional style this silver guitar had been made. Later, García de León learned of the tragic and senseless death of his student in a botched surgery.
García de León wrote The Silver Guitar as an elegy to his student that was fittingly premiered in 2001 by Juan Carlos Laguna at the annual guitar festival held in Noe Garcia Alcaraz's home of Taxco. The Silver Guitar is a three movement work starting with Introduction, Dance, and Elegy along with its coda. The composer uses free atonality and chance procedures, as well as an ethereal, sometimes sardonic mood to evoke the melancholic essence from which the piece is born.
Mr. Pezzimenti & Rowe perform “Canción.”
The “Canción” and “Final” in this CD are the last two movements of García de León’ Suite for Two Guitars, Op. 35, written in 1992. The tone of these pieces is lighter and more nostalgic, focusing on rhythmic qualities so pervasive in García de León’s music, such as the habanera rhythm in his Canción and the son jarocho in the Finale. Interestingly, Ernesto García de León urges a certain amount of improvisation from both performers in the Finale, yet another quality of the composer's style that is representative of the post-modern world.
“The music in this CD features the poetic beauty of the classical guitar that can only emanate from well composed comptemporary music played by the hands of two superb artists. This is music that is truly inspired, not hatched out based on a formula. This CD also features works of Cuban composer Martín Pedreira and Louisiana native composer Brian Clement-Foreman. The performers are Carlo Pezzimenti, who studied under the great Spanish Guitarist Andres Segovia, and Brian Rowe who currently studies classical guitar with Pezzimenti.
This music will invoke images of nature, of faraway land, of anguish at a loss, joy of love and the bliss of surrender to life itself...Just listen and allow Carlo Pezzimenti and Brian Rowe take you on a magical ride that words cannot describe...enjoy”. Austin Audu, Producer
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