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.
Narciso Yepes is good in some repertoire.
ReplyDeleteBut 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.
ReplyDeleteThe 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