The latest OMNI on-Location video was released yesterday morning, but this morning provided my first opportunity to view it. This was a duo offering by guitarist Giovanni Masi with Raffaele Ficuciello on flute. The selection was by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, his Opus 205, a three movement sonatina composed in 1965.
Giovanni Masi and Raffaele Ficuciello performing the Castelnuovo-Tedesco sonata being discussed (from their YouTube video)
Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed two guitar concertos, the first, his Opus 99 in D major, dedicated to Andrés Segovia. However, he was particularly prolific in both solo guitar music and chamber music including the guitar. As might be guessed, the sonatina was relatively brief, about a quarter of an hour in duration. Each of the three movements “says its piece” with a limited rhetoric of brevity. Nevertheless, within that limited duration, the interplay between the two musicians was an engaging one, even if it seemed (as above) that each was intently focused on his own instrument.
I know Castelnuovo-Tedesco best through my recordings of guitarist Andrés Segovia. His chamber music includes the Opus 143 quintet for guitar and strings. My recording of this performance also includes instrumental excerpts from Platero y yo (Platero and I), scored for guitar and a narrator reciting poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez. In that context, Opus 205 is more in the “short and sweet” genre; but brevity did not detract from the engaging delivery of the composer’s music by Masi and Ficuciello.
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