Doremi is racing ahead
in its ‘Segovia and Contemporaries’
series and has now reached volume four.
It’s more a reflection
of the repertoire, and Segovia’s 78
album from which it derived, but the
focus of interest here is actually weighted
slightly more in favour of Maria Luisa
Anido than Segovia himself.
His 1944 Decca set
was a conspectus of guitar music though
the emphasis was very much on historic
visitations; Pavanes and little anonymous
Canzone. Some were extracted from suites
for baroque guitar, others were realised
by Oscar Chilesotti (1848-1916) but
there were also the Torroba pieces,
works written expressly for Segovia.
All of the earlier pieces are delightful
but most are short and rely on Segovia’s
courtly elegance of expression to transmute
rather baser metal into gold. Of this
sequence it’s actually De Visee’s Entrada
that is the most captivating as one
hears Segovia append Iberian tints to
the essentially baroque furrow of the
piece. Or also the way his life-affirming
rhythmic genius enlivens an otherwise
pleasant Minuet. It’s the contemporary
Torroba however in which we hear Segovia
at his most distinctive. There’s the
intense vibrato and the coil of the
tone in Burgalesa and the warmly expressive
Arada. Equally impressive is his Tarrega
where the loquaciousness of the Danza
Mora is fuelled by the guitarist’s taut
drama.
Still, coupling this
very dissimilar repertoire with Anido’s
Melodiya and Victrola discs is instructive.
The Argentinian born Anido (1907-1996)
came from a guitar family – her father
was an amateur player and also edited
a guitar magazine. She studied with
a succession of the most eminent musicians,
Domingo Prat, Miguel Llobet and Josefina
Robledo and made a prodigy’s debut at
eleven, at around the time she first
heard Segovia. She gave many concerts
in Latin America and she taught before
branching out into world tours in the
1950s – she was especially popular in
Russia and Japan.
The two 1930s discs
here, the recordings of Cadiz and Rubinstein,
are delectable examples of her art though
to me the latter never quite flows idiomatically
enough. The later discs, undated here
but maybe deriving from around the time
of her Russian tours of the mid to later
1950s, offer a more solid example of
her mature musicianship. Her rubati
in the Albéniz Asturias may be
indulged but there’s no doubting the
sensitivity of its central section or
the languid haze of Granada. Her rhythm
in the Tarrega Recuerdos de la Alhambra
is almost defiantly elastic, an impression
reinforced to its detriment by the same
vice in the Granados Danza – the arpeggiated
chords are delightful but her indulgence
of rubati surely too capricious for
comfort. Elsewhere one can hear with
admiration her colour and tone in the
Variaciones sobre la Jota Aragonesa
along with its martial beaten tattoo
and some exceptionally fast passagework.
Jack Silver’s notes,
to which I’m indebted, are unusually
informative and full of useful biographical
details of Anido in particular. And
the recordings, if a touch dampened
down, are very listenable. Not only
that – enjoyable.
Jonathan Woolf
Andres Segovia (guitar) 
for
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