Andrés Segovia first visited the Alhambra, the storied 14th Century Moorish palace in Granada, Spain, when he was ten years old. “It was here,” he said, “that I opened my eyes to the beauty of nature and art. To be here is to feel oneself to be near, very near, paradise.”
Segovia is often called the father of classical guitar. As a young boy he learned to play flamenco, the traditional music of his native Andalusia, but by the time he was a teenager he was transcribing Bach and other composers, adapting music originally intended for different instruments. Over the course of his lifetime, Segovia transcribed much of the classical repertoire, refined the standard technique, and established the guitar as a serious instrument, bringing it out of the parlors and into the concert halls.
In 1976, at the age of 84, Segovia returned to the Alhambra to perform for the documentary, Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Guitar. In the excerpt above, Segovia plays one of his favorite pieces, “The Legend of Asturias,” by Isaac Albéniz, who composed it for the piano as a prelude to his “Cantos de España.” The complete documentary is available on a two-film DVD, Andrés Segovia: In Portrait.
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I have just read that this post, right now, had “0 comments and 59 reactions”… 59 people “reacted” to Andres Segovia but mainly didn’t have a word to say about it. That’s to say, people can vote, connect, twit, share… in this button-packed web but… no thought about it. Too busy for that, I guess, when you just want to be echo of this post… all this made me wonder what kind of culture have the readers of this blog.
This guy was like a messianic figure to me when I was learning
to play and I was always amazed by the size of his fingers – they’re
like tree trunks!
I don’t think this is a great performance and I wonder how many modern
players would ask for the idiosyncratic noises associated with this
instrument to be edited out?
I would like to see some profiles of the great female artists, Liona Boyd, and others here
Andŕes Segovia and Alhambra, two sides of art!
Actually Andres Segovia is a very controversial guitarist
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andr%E9s_Segovia&oldid=374925242#Controversy_regarding_Segovia