Hannah Murphy: Italy in the 19th Century - Legnani, Paganini, Regondi
"Around the 19th Century Guitar World!"
This Week: Italy in the 19th Century - Legnani, Paganini, Regondi
Italy was the birthplace of many great classical guitar virtuosos, although many of them found success outside of the Italian peninsula. Paganini was arguably one of the greatest violinists of all time, but was also a very talented guitarist and performed regularly with Legnani. Regondi, technically from Switzerland, followed in the Italian style of composition and was also a gifted multi-instrumentalist.
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I’ll repeat here a point I made in another thread: I don’t see that Regondi can reasonably be considered as Italian, except (possibly) by ancestry. As noted above, he was not born in Italy; nor did he ever live there. He spent his entire adult life (and a good part of his childhood) in England. Musically, his work (to my ear, at least) is cast in the harmonically enriched language of German romanticism. I don’t, myself, see much resemblance to the music of Paganini and Legnani. (A separate small point: according to Wikipedia (not the final authority, I concede) there is no actual evidence that the latter two ever performed together.) Having said all that, I strongly agree that Regondi should be included in any survey of the 19th century guitar. And since there is no session devoted to the ‘salons of London’ he might as well be make an appearance here!
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martin is it today or Friday? Just got a message saying it's today and the stream is waiting?
