Sor: Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 9 ('O cara armonia', 'Das klinget so herrlich'; Magic Flute Variations)

In 2004 Alexander Frauchi was awarded with the First Class Order of the Defendant of Motherland for his outstanding service in the performing arts and teaching. He also has an international guitar competition named after him. This CD includes Paganini’s Grand Sonata for Violin and guitar in A major and his Sonata for Violin and Guitar in A major.

Multi-award winner Anabel Montesinos returns to the Naxos label with the ‘graceful flexibility’ and ‘flawless technique’ (MusicWeb International) of her earlier acclaimed recital (8557294). She has since become 1st Prize Winner at the prestigious 2010 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition in Alessandria.

This programme is emblematic of the ‘Spanish guitar’, ranging from Pujol’s and Rodrigo’s respective Tres piezas españolas which descend from traditional folk styles, to Fernando Sor’s Variations on a Theme of Mozart, a showpiece which turns the guitar into a ‘miniature orchestra’.

The Swiss guitarist Roland Müller has brought together works for the guitar that are particularly popular and frequently requested in concert. His choice reflects the global relevance of the guitar. This artist performs and gives master classes in the USA and Europe.

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.

John Williams is regarded as a foremost ambassador of the guitar and one of the greatest guitarists of the post-Segovia period. In 1958 at the age of just 18 years, he recorded the first of a long series of discs which in a short time would have him hailed as an artist of international value.