Tárrega: Variations on Carnival of Venice

Supremely talented guitarist Xuefei Yang’s second disc for EMI Classics, 40 Degrees North, comprises guitar music from Spain and China.

Xuefei Yang was not only the first guitarist in China to enter music school and later to graduate from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with a Bachelor of Arts degree, but she was also the first Chinese guitarist to study classical guitar in the West.

The disc is so titled because the capital cities of both countries lie near latitude 40 degrees north. As Yang says: “To me, this parallel has come to symbolize the connection I feel to the music of both countries.”

The Spanish repertoire includes original solo guitar compositions (such as Tárrega’s Carnival of Venice) as well as arrangements of pieces written for piano or two guitars (Albéniz’s Seguidillas). Many of these works appear in new arrangements by Yang herself.

Since China has no established guitar repertoire of its own, the Chinese pieces on this recording originate either from arrangements of traditional Chinese pieces (including two traditional Chinese folk songs arranged for guitar by Gerald Garcia), or new compositions based on Chinese themes (such as Welsh composer Stephen Goss’s Chinese Garden, written especially for Yang).

Also included on this recording is Butterfly Lovers, originally written as a violin concerto using Western orchestral instruments and arguably the best known piece of Chinese music.

Rafael Aguirre Miñarro, First Prize Winner in the 2007 International Francisco Tárrega Guitar Competition, has studied with Teresa García de Candido, Manuel Jesús Pérez Vela, Miguel Tojar and Javier Chamizo, and since 2004 with Joaquín Clerch.

Rafael Aguirre won the 2007 Certamen Tarrega Competition.

The scope of the pieces he plays in this recital is truly cosmopolitan, covering music from the early nineteenth century up to the present time, from the simplicity of Poulenc’s Sarabande to the exuberant virtuosity of Villa-Lobos and Tárrega.