Villa-Lobos * Ginastera

From the booklet:
Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera, driving forces of the Latin-American Modernist movement, composed relatively sparingliy for the "national instrument" of their home countries. In fact the Sonata Op. 47 is the only piece Ginastera ever composed for the guitar. Nonetheless they both lastingly enriched the guitar repertoire with the compositions included on this CD.
Villa-Lobos' Etudes and Ginastera's Sonata undoubtedly belong amongst the most important pieces composed for guitar this century. One can sense the deep and immediate attachment of both composers to the culture and history of Latin America in these pieces; they fruitfully contrast tradtition with the new ideas and sounds of their modernist world. Both the Etudes and the Sonata were composed in Europe. One could say that Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera have travelled back down the road on which their fathers came under great hardship when they brought their alien culture onto the untouched continent. This meeting of cultures so different, this straddling of supposedly great opposites, this fusion of european (avant-garde) music, often strongly characterised by the intellect, with the archaic, natural music of the native peoples of Latin America, is the starting point for the work of both these composers and reaches an even more intense clarity in their pieces for guitar.

Few have played these Etudes so well!

Johannes Tonio Kreuschs Interpretation "...seems to reveal untapped resources in the music and to subvert convention..."

Johannes Tonio Kreusch's recording "Johannes Tonio Kreusch plays Villa-Lobos and Ginastera" (OEHMS Classics) won the french "Classica Repertoire Award". Here is what they said:

Complete collections of Villa-Lobos' twelve Études for guitar are so few that this rendition, recorded by Johannes Tonio Kreusch, is clearly the most definitive since the legendary, but dated, works of Narcisco Yepes or Julian Bream. The German guitarist displays an exceptional artistic temperment and commitment for one so young (28 years of age at the time of the recording).

The listener is won over from the very first by an extremely "symphonic" performance and a superb technical mastery evoking rare force. Kreusch is unsurpassed in recapturing the tensions, the subtle changes in atmosphere and in assuming the flavor of Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginestra.
Having consulted the original manuscript of the Brazilian composer's celebrated 1928 version of the famous "Études for the Guitar," Kreusch detected a certain number of errors introduced and perpetuated in later releases without the awareness of those who later dared approach this essenial guitar masterpiece. A critical reading is always welcome, in particular when accompanied, by an interpretation which, above and beyond the philological, musicological, and guitaristic approach, offers a masterful conribution to the Villa-Lobos discography. One thinks in particular of the Fourth Étude, in which the rapid, repetitive chords reach an intense, mysterious depth, to the Twelfth, an anguishing spiral, ending on a series of powerful chords. This, without mentioning the Tenth, where Kreusch's version differs considerably from from what is heard elsewhere.

Another masterpiece of guitar literature, Alberto Ginastera's Sonata Opus 47, replete with popular reminiscences of Argentina, explores the instrument's resources from a decidedly more contemporary perspective: percussions, frictions, rubbings, game before the bridge, etc. Kreusch right away finds the right tone, with a touch sometimes verging on the grotesque, but whose strength never fails to dominate admirably.

This is a disk which, not only brings euphoria to the listener, but makes him want to discover Kreusch's other recordings, whose contents sometimes borrow unexpectedly from heart of Latin American musical paths.