Appealing Performances Guitar music by Ponce and Tansman - heard by PATRIC STANDFORD '... a real pleasure ...'

The period of time now called 'The Beautiful Era' or 'La Belle Époque' lasted about forty years and only in retrospect was it judged to have been a gloriously luxurious, peaceful and artistically productive intermission before the outbreak of World War 1. While the Americans enjoyed the period as a 'Gilded Age' and England's Victorians become opulent Edwardians, Europe celebrated an excess of artistic creativity, placing its centre of inspiration at the heart of a new age of Parisian Bohemian life into which flowed a profusion of ideas, an excess of extrovert expression -- and plenty of money. Cabaret thrived, the pre-Raphaelites languished, and composers produced a vast number of songs and salon pieces.

Two composers who were drawn to Paris by its flourishing attractions were the Mexican pianist Manuel Ponce, whose output as a composer included a notable amount of guitar music, and the Polish born Alexandre Tansman, whose considerable list of stage and symphonic music includes very little for the guitar...

MSR CLASSICS

MEXICO

POLAND

JAPAN

GUITAR MUSIC