Guitar Concerto from Puerto Rico On Next Fretworks

The next Fretworks program will feature a mandolin concerto by Vivaldi, music of Bela Bartok for flute and guitar, as well as a guitar concerto by Puerto Rican composer Ernesto Cordero.  I'll also have music by Joaquin Rodrigo and a couple of rags by Scott Joplin played on piano and guitar. Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote many concertos for different combinations of instruments, and we'll hear one for mandolin, strings and harpsichord from a venerable recording made in the mid 1980's with Ugo Orlandi and I Solisti Veneti conducted by Claudio Scimone. Flutist Gary Schocker and guitarist Jason Vieaux perform an arrangement of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok's Roumanian Folk Dances.  They were based on folk music of Eastern Europe Bartok collected between 1909 and 1914. Much of composer-guitarist Ernesto Cordero's music has been described as "rooted in the multiple cultural elements that define the Caribbean region, where Spain, Africa, and the Pre-Columbian Caribbean converge in a universal aesthetic expression."  His very enjoyable Concierto Evocativo is from 1978 and we'll hear the distinguished Puerto Rican guitarist Leonardo Egurbida as soloist with the San Juan Pops Orchestra conducted by Roselin Pabon. Toward the end of the hour, Jerome Ducharme will play Three Spanish Pieces by Joaquin Rodrigo, and pianist John Novacek and  guitarist Steven Novacek will perform a couple of rags by Scott Joplin. Fretworks airs Saturday evening at 7 pm and Wednesday evening at 7 here on Classical 101.