Music Sunday

Detour into classical guitar

This blog isn’t only about cryptography. Today we’ll do a short detour into classical guitar, with a few of my favourite players performing pieces that have been with me for years.

Julian Bream (1933–2020) was an English guitarist and lutenist, legendary for his baroque recordings, Bach interpretations, and his revival of the Spanish repertoire. Here he is playing Capricho Arabe, a serenade in D minor by Francisco Tárrega (who also wrote the ubiquitous Recuerdos de la Alhambra). Capricho is central to the classical guitar canon and to me, one of the most beautiful pieces written for the instrument.

Fun fact: a young Bream once cornered Igor Stravinsky to play a brief lute demonstration (Dowland’s Flow, My Tears). Stravinsky was in no mood for it. Bream later called it “the most embarrassing moment of my career.”

Marcin Dylla is, in my view, one of the greatest guitarists alive. I once heard him in Geneva: flawless technique, rare musical intelligence, and an authenticity that serves the pieces rather than himself. Here he plays the Prelude No. 1 by another giant, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Villa-Lobos wrote the Cinco Prelúdios in Rio after returning from Europe. Prelude 1 is subtitled Homenagem ao Sertanejo brasileiro, a tribute to the sertanejo, meaning here the people and culture of the Sertão, the vast semi-arid hinterland west of Natal and Recife. The music is quintessentially Brazilian, rooted in the viola caipira tradition, though the luminous middle section and its radian E major chord reflects Villa-Lobos’s obsession with Bach.

And to close the loop, here’s Bream’s version (Prelude 1 starts at 2:46). It’s less romantic and more architectural, arguably more faithful to the original composition. Which do you prefer?

Featured image: Bahia hinterland, Brazil.