Search - Felix [1] Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann :: Romantic Guitar

I have always been drawn to mid-19th century music for its unabashed romanticism, even its sentimentality--qualities often absent in more recent works. The guitar, it seems to me, is uniquely suited for expression of this type. The guitar's intimate quality-inherent in the manner of sound production used, that of actual fingertips stroking the strings (as opposed to, say, the hammer of the piano or the bow of the violin)-contributes to this association. The pieces on this recording are all works of modest length and structure. As the guitar possesses a relatively small dynamic range, it tends to be most effective in the performance of works of such length, and thus the arrangements seem quite natural. The individual pieces, though, are parts of larger wholes, and it is in the presentation of the works in their entirety (Schumann) or in great enough numbers to constitute an authentic cycle (Mendelssohn), that this project finds its primary motivation.