Russian Guitar Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Of all Cristiano Porqueddu’s adventurous guitar-music surveys on record for Brilliant Classics, the latest may be the most invaluable and enlightening for listeners who may never even have suspected that Russia had a rich guitar tradition of its own. As a detailed booklet essay complementing this new recording explains, the guitar flourished during the first half of the 19th century in Russia. Towards the turn of the 20th century, it became more of a folk instrument, a trend further exaggerated by the cultural demands of the Russian revolution which repurposed both instruments and musicians to vernacular ends for songs and marches to raise the spirits. However, a renaissance took place in classical guitar composition following the triumphant tour of Andres Segovia across Soviet Russia in 1926. The impact of that event may be felt not only in the work of Boris Asafiev, who saw Segovia play, but even two generations later in the Hispanic flair of Edison Denisov’s Sonata, with its edgy op