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The only collection you'll need of the best classical guitar music. Featuring numerous prizewinners from the Naxos catalog, this overview brings together over three centuries of music for the guitar by Sor, Paganini, Lauro, Villa-Lobos, and many others. An essential package for the classical guitar lover, and the ultimate introduction to this world for guitar players of every stripe!

At 25-CDs, this may well be the only collection you’ll need of the best classical guitar music. Featuring numerous prizewinners from the Naxos catalog, this overview brings together over three centuries of music for the guitar by Sor, Paganini, Lauro, Villa Lobos and many others.

SELECT REVIEWS OF SOME OF THE INDIVIDUAL DISCS IN THE CLASSICAL GUITAR COLLECTION:

Cancion De Cuna - Guitar Music From Cuba / Marco Tamayo, Naxos 8555887 -- "Each piece is a gem, wonderfully written, performed, and recorded... Short of buying a ticket for a weekend excursion to Havana, this is certainly one of the most enjoyable ways to explore the musical traditions of Cuba..." - musicweb.uk.net

Barrios: Guitar Music Vol 1 / Antigoni Goni, Naxos 8554558 -- Uplifting, imaginative music in many varieties gushed from Agustín Barrios' fecund brain directly into his agile hands and perpetually singing guitar...Don't miss this one!

Lauro: Venezuelan Waltzes / Adam Holzman, Naxos 554348 -- Buy this disc and you'll encounter a treasure trove of exquisitely wrought miniatures. They are gorgeously deployed for the instrument, laced with ear-tickling harmonic invention, and offer further rewards with each hearing...On top of that, the disc is excellently recorded. A lovely, lovely release.

Guitar Music Of Argentina / Villadangos, Naxos 8555058 -- A charming programme elegantly played...Villadangos is a refined player in every good sense...Recording quality and annotation is excellent.

Bach: Guitar Transcriptions / Voorhorst, Naxos 8555369 -- Voorhorst is unquestionably a fine musician whose mastery of the guitar in this repertoire is beyond doubt...The sound is fully supportive of the solo instrumental setting and affords a natural, intimate acoustic.

Classical Guitar Collection

Instruments bearing at least some similarity to what we know as the guitar have been popular for several thousand years. The guitar appears to be derived from an earlier instrument known in Central Asia as the cithara, found depicted on Persian cave dwellings. The modern word, guitar, comes from the Spanish guitarra, perhaps from the earlier Greek kithara. More likely, the word is derived from the Iberian Arabic qitara, an Arabic name for the lute family. The name guitarra morphed into Spanish when guitars were brought to the peninsula during the Moorish invasions. Celebrated also for the development of the Mandolin, the Vinanccia family of Naples created the earliest 6-string guitars in the late 18th-century. Though some composers were proficient on the instrument, most notably Paganini and Berlioz, the guitar has not been regarded as central to the classical music canon, like the piano has, another harmony instrument that underwent a design overhaul at the beginning of the 19th century. A notable guitar innovation has been the extensive use of the steel-string instrument in folk, rock and popular music for well over a century.

Though many of their names are not among the list of most notable composers, the guitar’s repertoire has been enriched by several individuals who wrote almost exclusively for the instrument. Though J.S. Bach would not have been familiar with the guitar, the contrapuntal nature of his work has presented challenges for instrumentalists of various types, and several of his pieces pose serious challenges in their guitar transcriptions. Not one to shy away from challenges, supervirtuoso violinist/composer Nicolo Paganini composed several remarkably adventurous works for the guitar. The slightly-older Spaniard Fernando Sor did more to popularize the instrument in the 19th-century than any other individual. He sought to elevate the guitar to concert status, bringing it out of the taverns where it was used mostly as song accompaniment. Not until Andres Segovia in the 20th century would the guitar have such a strong advocate. The Neapolitan Ferdinando Carulli was the first to publish a guitar method and, like Sor, composed a great amount of music. Miguel Llobet, years later, became a major touring virtuoso, composing an impressive body of work in the early 20th century.

Due in no small part to Spanish colonization, the guitar holds a central place in the music of Latin America, and its countries have boasted a large share of talented composers. These include Mexico’s Miguel Ponce, Cuba’s Leo Brouwer, Venezuela’s Antonio Lauro, and countless numbers of other composers who wrote idiomatic works that absorbed the rhythms and vocabulary of the region. Paraguayan Augustin Barrios composed graceful works of supreme craftsmanship that incorporated folk elements of the region, and Hector Villa-Lobos – the titan of Brazilian music - wrote several demanding pieces for the guitar (he played it and dedicated some works to Segovia), the most significant of which are the celebrated sets of Etudes and Preludes. One of the most prolific of composers, his forty guitar works are, to many, the most important guitar pieces of the 20th century.

-- Sean Hickey

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