Giuliani: Rossiniana No. 1, Op. 119

The Romantic period was one of the most extravagant eras in musical history, as these recordings show. All of the composers on this recording treat the guitar in extremely virtuosic manner, often exploiting the instrument's tonal and technical potential up to its limits and beyond, transporting the listener into the Romantic era.

The French-born guitarist Roland Dyens began studying his instrument at the age of nine. By age 33, he was listed as one of the world’s best by The Guitarist Magazine. Dyens is currently a professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. Known also as a brilliant arranger, Dyens has chosen some of the most memorable guitar repertoire by late 18th and early 19th - century composers and arranged it for solo guitar and string quartet, specifically the Quatuor Arthur LeBlanc: seven études by the 19th century Catalan composer Fernando Sor; and one of the six Rossiniana composed by Mauro Giuliani on themes from Rossini operas. Dyens also performs Giuliani’s Variations on a Theme by Handel and Sor’s Grand Solo, opus 14 for solo guitar.

The Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc, composed of violinists Hibiki Kobayashi and Brett Molzan, violist Jean-Luc Plourde, and cellist Ryan Molzan, is widely recognized as one of Canada’s finest string ensembles. The group recently made its debut at Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, the QAL assumed the role of quartet-in-residence at the Université Laval in Quebec City.

Recorded 1990–2004

Mauro Giuliani is one of the most popular composers you may never have heard of, unless you’re a guitarist. He was to the guitar what Paganini was to the violin: a performer, composer, entrepreneur and teacher of diverse and prodigious talent. He harnessed the early-19th-century’s growing fascination for the performer as virtuoso, and the evolving technology of the guitar, to forge a conspicuously successful career that was curtailed only by his early death at the age of forty-nine.

Born in the heel of Italy, he moved further and further northwards, where the money and fame was, graduating from a position in Bologna towards the cultural pole-star of Europe, Vienna, where his first compositions were published while he was in his twenties. These included some of the studies on this fascinating anthology: aimed at domestic tuition, to be sure, and still popular as such, but full of agreeable and arresting melodies.

The works on CDs 1 and 3 show how sure Giuliani’s ear and eye were for the main chance. Capitalising on the success of Rossini’s operas, and the popularity of northern European folk melodies (just as Haydn and Beethoven did with their piano-trio arrangements), Giuliani reeled off variation sets and pot-pourris as occasion and publishers demanded.

His concertos are still on the fringes of the repertoire. These solo works may be less well known, but they are no less delightful, especially in these modern and sensitive performances.