This afternoon the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released the latest video to be added to its Omni On Location series. The location for this video is Solofra, an Italian town in the province of Avellino. As might be expected, the performer is an Italian guitarist, Giovanni Masi. The music was the final movement of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Opus 77 sonata, given the subtitle “Omaggio a Boccherini.” This was one of several works inspired by the composer having met the guitarist Andres Segovia.
Guitarist Giovanni Masi (screen shot from the video being discussed, courtesy of the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts)
Since only that one movement was performed, the video is relative brief, less than four and one-half minutes in duration. From a personal point of view, my knowledge of the composer comes primarily from the Opus 143 quintet for guitar and strings that he composed in 1950, after his move to the United States. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that Castelnuovo-Tedesco managed to cram a rich brew of thematic material and technical challenges into this relatively brief movement, leaving some (at least myself included) hoping to get to know the three preceding movements. For now, however, that single movement has its own YouTube Web page.
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