Yradier: La Paloma

This CD features music very much influenced by the former “Kronländer” of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, reaching from Bregenz to Chernivtsi and from Prague to Sarajevo. Many of the pieces were composed by the bothers Johann and Josef Schrammel who composed during the Danube monarchy.

Awarded the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory’s Rubinstein Medal, classical guitarist Vicente Coves presents a beguiling recital of music from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay and Spain in which Classical and folk music, Afro-Cuban jazz and avant-garde influences, passion and pathos may all be heard.

This is a very important album which will be widely greeted by lovers of the Spanish Guitar. Tárrega was in many respects the founder of the modern Spaniosh Guitar movement, in that he not only was of the greatest importance in introducing a new style of guitar playing, but also the instrument on which it should be played. Before his death in 1909, Tarrega wrote and arranged much music for the guitar, and we have on this record a unique selection, embracing his own compositions as well as several of his best-known transcriptions. The Swiss guitarist Michael Erni is one of the finest currently before the public, and the recording quality is virtually state of the art. This is one of the very few CDs entirely devoted to Tárrega.

Spanish Love Songs takes a whirlwind tour of Iberian culture, from the mystically introspective to the opulently romantic.

Decades before Spain had its own repertoire of classical songs, French and German musicians mined Spanish themes and folklore for their newly burgeoning canon of art songs. On Spanish Love Songs we hear the great masters Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Maurice Ravel, fascinated by the beauty of Spanish culture, along side the music of Spain's greatest composers of song.