Julian Bream’s Guitar

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

In the pantheon of the great guitarists of the 20th century, the late English-born Julian Bream stands side by side with Andrés Segovia, Narciso Yepes, John Williams, and Pepe Romero.

An artist of magisterial musicianship and impressive technique, Bream’s extensive recorded legacy has become a victim to the vagaries of the recording industry’s ups and downs. So it is with gratitude that we welcome the recently released Alto CD of music by Fernando Sor, Joaquin Turina, Manuel de Falla and Claude Debussy in a felicitous mix with a Chaconne, a Prelude, a Suite and a Partita by J. S. Bach all played by Bream with impeccable musicality, sober restraint, idiomatic elegance, and an absence of any fussy mannerisms.

Half of the music featured on this CD straddles the early 18th and early 19th centuries: areas of the guitar repertoire that the formidable Julian Bream dominates with his mastery of the music of Bach and the Spanish Fernando Sor.

Bream then turns to the music of Claude Debussy for a perfect rendition of Le Tombeau de Couperin. Yet it is in Joaquin Turina’s Homenaje a Tárrega and in the same composer’s Sonata in D minor that Bream finds a true soul mate, digging into the Flamenco-inspired Garrotín with soulful duende, then following it with a superb Soleares, an evanescent Fandango, a magical rendition of the D minor Sonata, and a haunting Rafaga.

This listener looks forward to more re-mastered, reissued treasures by great soloists from the past century.

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”