Hecho en Salamanca by Emiliano Pardo-Tristan

Although the entire opera is rarely performed, the first of its two dances is well known, especially the transcriptions for violin and piano, piano solo and two guitars. The first of the two dances in Brief Life is a jota, heard in the second act when Paco and Carmela are celebrating their marriage party and invite everybody to dance, while Salud watches trough a window. The gypsy is sad about her unlucky destiny, and when the dance is over she confronts Paco. After revealing to the guests Paco's treason, Salud dies at hers lover's feet. The opera is located in the Albaicín, a traditional gypsy neighborhood in the province of Granada. The argument, like a metaphoric transformation from García Lorca's romances, describes the Andalusian sorrow, the black pity that in the words of Lorca himself is "a discrepancy between the intelligence of love and its surrounding mystery, which is never understood."

Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida, better known as Leo Brouwer, was born in Havana, Cuba on March 1st, 1939. Brouwer, grandnephew of Ernesto Lecuona, is without a doubt the most important guitar composer of the Twentieth-century, having catalogued the largest number of concertos for the instrument. His four Micropiezas (Micro pieces) were dedicated to the French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), famous for the systematic use of polytonality (the simultaneous use of more than one tonality) in his works. In the Micropiezas Brouwer uses one of his favorites clichés: the repetition and modification of rhythmic cells that have their origins in Afro-Cuban music. The cell modification, so rich and intrinsic to Brouwer's music, is a very conscious technical process for him: "The material transformation; here we begin with something that is not done. People have an idea and do not change it. We have to see the different aspects of the musical material. The element of the homo luden, the playing man, who transforms in every possible manner the material by playing with it."

The guitar duet Son-Sonete, composed in 1995, is an early and experimental work, which essentially employs the minimalist technique. Minimalism is based on the repetition of minuscule portions of musical material. It is the same method used to build rhythmic patterns that accompany popular Latin American music. The word sonsonete describes the execution of repetitive sounds to imitate a beat in music. This could be considered to be primitive minimalism. Son-Sonete experiments what could be called poliminimalism or the simultaneous repetition of musical cells. Furthermore, the piece briefly employs one of the most celebrated techniques from the Brouwerian palette: minimalism by expansion, or the inclusion of notes that vary and extend the repetitive patterns in their own development.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was the composer of concertos in the Baroque period. In addition to his extensive concerto output, Vivaldi influenced other composers as well. Before writing an original concerto, J. S. Bach (1685-1750) transcribed and studied the structure of several Vivaldi concertos, as well as others by Torelli and the brothers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. Obviously, Bach's purpose was not to copy Vivaldi but to enrich the concerto structure with the grandiosity of his genius.

The catalog number RV (Répertoire Vivaldi) is not a parameter that indicates the chronology of Vivaldi's concertos, because, contrary to the Eighteenth-century custom, the composer did not date his manuscripts. Peter Ryon's catalog numbers RV 93, for the D Major concerto for Lute, and RV 532, for the G Major Concerto for Two Mandolins, do not reveal which work was written first. The two concertos differ, not only in the choice and number of solo instruments, but in their form, orchestral texture, and basso continuo instruments (harpsichord for RV 93 and organ for RV 532).

The transcriptions of both concertos by Vivaldi presented in this recordings, were done for audiences with a broad criteria. Perhaps, the same open-mindedness employed by J. S. Bach when transcribing works that fell into his hands. Curiously, it was Bach's son C. P. E. Bach (1714-1788) who preferred to realize the basso continuo with the piano because of its "dynamic resources instead of the harpsichord's rigidity." What the "purists" sometimes forget is that in the Baroque period the music was more important than the instrument producing it. This explains why J. S. Bach transcribed so many of his own, and other composer's works, to a variety of instruments available in his time. In this recording the contrabass was chosen for the continuo, over cello or any other instruments, due to its register relation with the guitar, rather than a timber or dynamic reason. The contrabass, doubling an octave lower the piano, reinforces the continuo, supporting the harmonic platform, and helping the fluency and liberty of the soloistic part with its stable pulse.

Vivaldi preferred, for his concerto, the three-movements structure: fast slow fast. In the second movement, which was almost always binary, the continuo instruments usually accompanied the soloist, sometimes with the addition of two violins and rarely with the whole orchestra. The Concerto for Lute in D Major RV 93, has the slow movements' common instrumentation (2 violins and continuo), perhaps so the orchestra does not overshadow the solo instrument. All the movements of this concerto are monothematic and in the baroque dances' customary binary form. The first movement uses the Lombardic style, which consists of accenting the strong beats by means of rapid figures, and the third is an Italian Giga. However, Vivaldi does not use the binary form in the Concerto for Two Mandolins in G Major RV 532, but the ritornello or refrain form"alternation between the tutti (orchestra) and the soloist's modulating episodes. A structure introduced and named by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643).

Elcio De Sá, a Brazilian composer who has resided in Panama since 1992, dedicated his solo guitar work Saretê to his wife, the guitarist Teresa Toro. The catalog of De Sá includes works for solo instruments, chamber music, band, chorus and orchestra. The composer refers to Saretê (anagram of Teresa) as follows: "I wanted to dedicate a piece to Teresa to test her technical and musical skills. Therefore, I chose the interval of a second as one of the core materials as well as incisive rhythms that after their own development resulted in the need to interlock and juxtapose gestures, where the left and right hands, at time, are obliged to exchange their function. The second movement, ideally, should not be separated from the first by a long pause. It is built of two main thematic groups, with a more lyric and linear character than those priors, contrasting with the return of the first movement's material. In general, and as a whole, the piece's form is A B A', where B and A' integrate the second movement."

Fantasía del Tambor by Brazilian composer Giácomo Bartoloni was written in 1998, and it was also dedicated to Teresa Toro and her teacher Cristina Tourinho. The work employs, as compositional resources, the repetition of fixed hand positions along the guitar fingerboard (a technique extensively used by Heitor Villa-Lobos); the well-known Panamanian tune El Tambor de la Alegría, and the cell 3+3+2, intrinsic to several Latin American music styles. Fantasía del Tambor is an idiomatic piece, and this is the reason why it works so effectively for the two guitars.

Made in Salamanca is a recording of contrasting styles and diverse periods and composers, drawing its unifying frame and inspiration from the rich architecture of this incredible Spanish city and the welcoming hospitality of its people.

©2004 Emiliano Pardo-Tristán

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