And
now for a little bit of pure pleasure – the delightful little romance that
Narciso Yepes wrote as a gift for his mother in 1938 and which was subsequently
used as the theme for René Clément’s 1952 film Jeux Interdit (“Forbidden Games”). I don’t know whether Yepes was
coy about being the composer or whether his authorship of the piece was
forgotten, but many recordings list the composer as “Anonymous” – including even recordings
of Yepes himself. For example, his CD Romance
d’Amour lists the composer as “Anónimo” and describes it as “Musique du
film; Arr.: N. Yepes”.
When
you watch the video, take note of the ten-string guitar, which was developed in
1963 by Yepes, in collaboration with renowned guitar maker José Ramírez. The
four additional strings were tuned to C, A#, G#, F#, which resulted in the
first guitar with truly chromatic string resonance - similar to that of the
piano with its sustain/pedal mechanism. He gave this guitar its first outing in
1964, in a performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez with the Berlin
Philharmonic, and from that time on he used that instrument exclusively. I had
the pleasure of hearing him in a solo recital in Canberra, an ABC Concert on 5
June 1976.
Access
the video clip here.
For
an earlier post on this wonderful guitarist see Narciso
Yepes and the Concierto de Aranjuez.
2 comments:
Narciso Yepes is good in some repertoire.
But ultimately Narciso Yepes is a modernist. His interpretations of Bach and early 19th century works (Carulli, Sor, etc.) are straigh-jacketed horrible unflexible literal modernist interpretations.
The story of Narciso Yepes having written the work "Romance" for his mother, is just that: as story.
The true facts is: There are published editions of that work, from even before Yepes was born; and there's even an old historic recording of the work, from before Yepes was born.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_%28guitar_piece%29#Disproved_origins
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