Andrés Segovia Archive: Grand Finale

by Bill Heck

Alexandre Tansman: Cavatina; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Sonata; Hans Haug: Alba; Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata; Federico Mompou: Suite Compostelana. Roberto Moronn Pérez, guitar. Reference Recordings Fresh FR-759

This is the fourth and apparently final album in a series in which each album contains works by various composers commissioned by or dedicated to Andrés Segovia. JJP reviewed the second and third albums in the series.

The first three albums in the series featured works found in Segovia’s collected papers but, as far as we know, never recorded by him; this album features works that Segovia did record. The performances here, though, follow the original manuscripts from the composers minus any changes that Segovia might have made for performance.

It’s also worth noting that while the compositions are all from the 20th century, they remain within the tonal tradition, perhaps best characterized as post-romantic; nothing atonal or twelve-tone here.

It seems only fair to prospective listeners to start with a warning: the fact that Segovia recorded a work does not mean that said performance is always easy to find or even available. His recording career stretched from 1949 to 1977; since then, his recordings have been package, repackaged, and re-repackaged. Moreover, the original releases mostly were recitals rather than being focused on any particular composer (excluding albums dedicated to transcriptions of works by J S Bach), so the combinatorial possibilities seem endless. I mention all this because I wanted to find performances by Segovia for comparative purposes; I succeeded for most by using Qobuz, but readers with similar ambitions should not be discouraged if they are unable to do so. In any case, the major story here is that the performances by Perez stand very nicely on their own. I concur with JJP in his assessment of Perez’s playing: “… he plays with flair but also with nuance and subtlety.“

Andres Segovia (1962)

So let's take it piece by piece. Tasman’s mostly introspective Cavatina, a five-movement work said to “…evoke the mystery of the Italian city…“ of Venice; the musical language might fittingly be described as baroque but with some modern harmonic twists. The performance by Segovia that I found shows two significant differences as compared to the one by Perez. First, and I hesitate to sound critical of the great Segovia, but I think he can sound a bit perfunctory here. Perez, on the other hand, lavishes attention on each note and each phrase. This shows up in the timings of the movements, where Perez takes a little more time for each. (Of course, one person’s perfunctory is another person’s lively, so your taste may not match mine.) A more “objective” difference is in the recording itself: Segovia’s guitar is very close miced indeed, occasionally giving the impression that one’s head is stuck inside the sound box while also making finger noises prominent. The superb Reference Recordings approach pulls the microphones back for a more natural sound, more like what one would hear at any reasonable distance, and nearly free of distracting finger noises. I don’t mean that the Segovia recording is unlistenable, far from that, but the sound can be distracting.

In the case of the second work on the album, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonata, I simply was unable to find Segovia‘s complete recording anywhere, although I did find one movement, the Allegro, within a couple of collections. Even for the single movement, there’s quite a contrast in terms of recording as compared to the previous work: the acoustic here is slightly muffled in a very reverberant environment. (Then again, you ought to hear the whole thing, not just one movement, so the point is moot.) No doubt a truly dedicated collector could turn up Segovia‘s complete recording, but with Perez’s excellent performance at hand, I wasn’t up for the effort.

After these two large works, Perez programs a much shorter piece, Haug’s Alba, that largely consists of series of chords meant to convey the rising of the morning sun. It is a quietly lovely five-minute “meditation“ that fits nicely between the larger works before and after. And here, compared to the Segovia recording that I found, there’s no contest: the sound on the old Segovia recording is just bad, and in any case I prefer Perez’s slower, more gentle approach to this music.

Manén’s Fantasia-Sonata combines four movements without pause, running over 17 minutes. The liner notes mention that the structure requires intense concentration from the performer, and concentration is required from the listener as well. Description here of such a varied work would make this review far too long, so I’ll skip to the performance and sound. I did find a recording by Segovia, which sounds distantly recorded in a very reverberant location, perhaps a cathedral. The performances by Segovia and Perez sound fairly similar, although there certainly are differences; as usual here, the closer, more focused acoustic of the newer recording is what catches the ear immediately.

The final work on the album, Mompou’s Suite Compostelana, is meant to represent six stages of a pilgrim’s journey to a shine. Written in 1962, it's certainly not radical but it does have a slightly more contemporary flavor than the earlier works here. Moreover, the relatively recent date of composition means that Segovia’s recording benefits from modern technology and thus is sonically far better than earlier ones: gone is the all-enveloping reverberation and we can truly hear his extraordinary ability to separate musical lines. It’s not all great: finger noises are a little more prominent than one would like, and there does seem to be some subtle pitch instability, which may not bother everyone as it is quite minor, presumably resulting from tape deterioration. Perez’s own performance, though, is hardly left in the shade and it's worth hearing both.

Now let’s put this all together. First, this is an absolute must-hear for true fans of classical guitar. For the rest of us, I want to emphasize that everything here is first-rate, interesting music played in a first-rate way. It is very much worth your time to give it a listen – and to go back and check out the previous three volumes in this series as well.