Tárrega: Sueno

Guitarist Mattias Jacobsson makes his recording debut on Avie with Invocación, a unique perspective on the works of Francisco Tárrega, his inspiration Chopin, and his students Llobet and Pujol.

The brilliant young guitarist Mattias Jacobsson invokes a guitar tradition originating with the influential Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega. The repertoire explores Tárrega’s influences and legacy, from the inspiration that Chopin had on his musical output through to his students Miguel Llobet and Emilio Pujol. Tárrega often turned to Chopin’s favoured forms - Preludes, Mazurkas and Nocturnes - and also transcribed works in those forms by Chopin. Mattias has created a unique concept in the guitar discography by juxtaposing Chopin transcriptions with Tárrega’s most Chopinesque works. The “invocación” continues through works of two of Tárrega’s most prominent pupils in Barcelona and even extends to Mattias himself, whose first teacher Erik Möllerström studied in Barcelona and secured an instrument from the great guitar maker Ignacio Fleta e hijos, that now has been passed on to Mattias and is played on this recording.

Juilliard-trained Mattias Jacobsson was born in Stockholm and has studied with Göran Söllscher and Sharon Isbin, among others. He has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and has appeared on Spanish television, New York’s WQXR and National Public Radio’s Performance Today. He has further extended his reach with several features in Classical Guitar Magazine and hundreds of thousands of views on his YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/guitarcactus

There is no question of José Miguel Moreno being anything other than the leading Spanish specialist in historical plucked string instruments. As a concert performer, researcher, builder and collector of instruments and co-founder of the Glossa label, Moreno has, over the last 30 years, been the guiding beacon for a number of succeeding generations of guitarists and lutenists the world over. Glossa was the label for which he recorded two of his now legendary programmes, La Guitarra Española (1536-1836) and La Guitarra Española (1818-1918). These had previously been deleted but Glossa are now bringing them back as a double set.

Moreno plays a range of instruments made either by Lourdes Uncilla or by himself in order to infuse with a new vitality the fundamental repertories in the history of the guitar as bequeathed by the vihuelists Narváez, Milán and Mudarra, then later composed by figures such as Francisco Guerau, Santiago de Murcia and Gaspar Sanz, and subsequently through the romantic scores of Fernando Sor and Johann Kaspar Mertz. Tárrega and Llobet, the great masters of post-Romanticism, close this survey striding with infinite musicality across the most representative compositions of four centuries of the Spanish guitar. This special edition marks, as well, the departure point of a new process of collaboration between José Miguel Moreno and the label which he helped to create, with brand new recordings being planned, which will appear from the autumn of this year onwards.

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.

At a concert in 1862 a small 10-year-old boy listened to a modest-looking guitar. It was "La Leona", an experiment by guitar-builder Antonio Torres. He never forgot that sound. Six years later he acquired his first own "Torres". Much later, in 1894, by which time Francisco Tárrega had long since become the world′s most famous guitarist, he finally held his dream in his hands. This legendary instrument is recorded here for the first time on disc. And there is more: Wulfin Lieske plays the best instruments by the world′s most famous guitar manufacturers for comparison...

Guitars by Torres, Arias, Ramírez, Esteso, Hernández, Fleta played by Wulfin Lieske.