Omni Video Showcases Alicante Guitar Students

While the videos released by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts usually serve as a platform for “seasoned professionals,” every now and then there is a release that looks to the future based on students headed for a promising career. The most extreme example of this latter case probably took place back in November of 2023, with the release of the final movement of Leo Brouwer’s first guitar sonata played by Xinyan Sun, a nine-year old guitar prodigy. The title of today’s new video is Emerging Stars of the Guitar. It was filmed at the Palau del Portalet in Alicante, Spain and featured three recipients of scholarships that were awarded by the D'Addario Foundation and the Fundación Alhambra Guitarras. Those scholarships supported their matriculating in the Master in Classical Guitar Performance program at the University of Alicante.

Title frame for the video being discussed showing photographs of Lucrezia Bonasia, Filippos Manoloudis, and Eduardo Sueiro (from the video’s YouTube Web page)

Over the course of about 35 minutes, each of the students performed two selections. The program began with Lucrezia Bonasia playing one of the best-known compositions by Agustín Barrios, his three-movement suite La Catedral. This was followed by Dionisio Aguado’s Opus 16, another three-movement composition entitled “Le Fandango.” Filippos Manoloudis began his set with “Les Graces” has own arrangement of music for harpsichord by Jacques Duphly. (Duphly published four volumes of harpsichord music during the middle of the eighteenth century.) He then played the second movement of Eduardo López-Chavarri’s second guitar sonata, composed in the key of D minor. The final guitarist, Ederaldo Sueiro, began with another suite, The Black Widow in three movements composed by Jaime Zenamon. He then concluded the video with the seventh of the twelve études that Heitor Villa-Lobos composed in 1928.

Taken as a whole, this could not be a better way to spend half an hour. The selections were impressive not only for their diversity but also for the breadth of the time-line in which they were situated. There should be much to expect from the future of these three students that will be supported by their scholarships!