Duets with the Spanish Guitar

Duets with the Spanish Guitar
Studio album by Laurindo Almeida
Released 1958
Genre Classical
Length 55:18
Label Capitol
Producer Robert E Myers
Alternative cover
1990 release
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]

Duets with the Spanish Guitar is an album by the Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida, with the singer Salli Terri and the flautist Martin Ruderman. It was originally released by Capitol Records in 1958.

Reception

Allmusic awarded the album with 3 stars.[2] The recording has often been described as a masterpiece and won an award for Best Engineered Classical Album at the 1959 Grammy Awards for the recording engineer, Sherwood Hall III. The singer Salli Terri was also nominated for Best Classical Vocal Performance at the awards. It has been reported that upon hearing her version of "Bachianas Brasilieras No 5" from the album, the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos stated that he considered it to be the best recorded performance of the work.[3] In 2010, Duets with the Spanish Guitar was inducted into the Fanfare Magazine Classical Recording Hall of Fame.[4]

In her recent memoir Simple Dreams, singer Linda Ronstadt discusses Duets With the Spanish Guitar and notes that her aunt, the renowned Spanish singer Luisa Espinel was a friend of vocalist Salli Terri: "Knowing I wanted to sing, Aunt Luisa had sent me a recording, Duets with the Spanish Guitar, which featured guitarist Laurindo Almeida dueting alternately with flautist Martin Ruderman and soprano Salli Terri. It became one of my most cherished recordings."[5] Ronstadt further states that her aunt Luisa was a friend of Terri's and had helped her with research material for her recordings, coached her Spanish pronunciation and loaned her authentic performance costumes.[5]

The recording is also cited in the Diane Wood Middlebrook biography of poet Anne Sexton: "They discovered they shared a passion for Laurindo Almeida’s guitar rendition of Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras.” For years afterwards, the fluting voice of Salli Terri on that recording expressed for Sexton an epitome of feeling, a purity the poetry could never reach; its wordless rapture stood for the liberty of those days with Anne Wilder."[6]

On the recording, Almeida arranges standard classical and folk repertoire through the prism of several Latin musical forms, including the modenha, charo, maracatu and boi bumba.[7] The result, according to a 1958 issue of Hi-Fi and Music Review was "...a prize winner in my collection. Laurindo Almeida’s guitar playing captures the keen poignancy and rhythmic élan of Brazilian music with superb assurance and taste...Salli Terri sings Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 with a sinuousness and ecstasy which makes this the finest modern version".[8] The album received extensive radio airplay and has sold consistently ever since it was released. In 1990, the album was released by EMI as a CD titled Duets with Spanish Guitar and included 6 bonus tracks from subsequent recordings.[9]

Track listing

  1. "Entr'acte" (Jacques Ibert) — 3:12
  2. "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5" (Heitor Villa-Lobos) — 2:24
  3. "Ronde" (Emile Desportes) — 2:01
  4. "Azulão" (Jayme Ovalle) — 1:28
  5. "Prelude in E Minor" (Frédéric Chopin) — 2:13
  6. "O Caçador" (Laurindo Almeida) — 1:47
  7. "Pastorale Joyeuse" (Desportes) — 2:36
  8. "Três Pontos de Santo" (Ovalle) — 4:06
  9. "Tambourin" (François-Joseph Gossec) — 1:26
  10. "Boi-Bumbá" (Valdemar Henrique) — 1:35
  11. "Sicilienne" (Gabriel Fauré) — 4:00
  12. "Para Niñar" (Paurillo Barroso) — 2:20
  13. "Pièce en Forme de Habanera" (Maurice Ravel) — 2:45
  14. "Maracatu" (Ernani Braga) — 3:33
  15. "Pavane pour une infante défunte" (Ravel) — [Bonus Track] 3:53
  16. "Passarinho Está Cantando" (Francisco Mignone) — [Bonus Track] 1:23
  17. "Modinha" (Bandeiro, Ovalle) — [Bonus Track] 2:20
  18. "Waltz from the Serenade for Strings" (Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky) — [Bonus Track] 2:53
  19. "Canción from Siete Canciones Populares Españolas" (Manuel de Falla) — [Bonus Track] 1:24
  20. "Farrúca" (De Falla) — [Bonus Track] 2:38

Personnel

Awards

Grammy Awards[10]

Year Winner Category
1959 Sherwood Hall III Best Engineered Album, Classical

References

  1. ↑ Allmusic Review
  2. ↑ Allmusic Review: Duets with Spanish Guitar accessed 20 April 2010
  3. ↑ salliterri.org: Duets with the Spanish Guitar (LP)
  4. ↑ "Laurindo Almeida Duets with Spanish Guitar on EMI", Fanfare, September 2010
  5. 1 2 Ronstadt, Linda (2013), Simple Dreams A Musical Memoir, Simon and Schuster, p. 30
  6. ↑ Middlbrook, Diane Wood (1991), Anne Sexton A Biography, Random House, p. 239
  7. ↑ McGowan, Chris; and Pessanha, Ricardo (2009), The Brazilian Sound; Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil, Temple University Press, p. 179
  8. ↑ Hi-Fi and Music Review, May 1958 Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. ↑ salliterri.org: Duets with Spanish Guitar (CD)
  10. ↑ "Past Winners Search". GRAMMY.com. Retrieved November 1, 2015.
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