From Bach to Stravinsky on Next Fretworks

The next Fretworks program airing Saturday evening at 7 pm and Wednesday evening at 7 will feature guitar arrangements for music of Bach and Stravinsky, as well as solo guitar pieces by by Isaac Albeniz and Miguel Llobet.  We'll also hear English music for the lute from the time of William Shakespeare. American guitarist Sharon Isbin will begin the hour with a popular showpiece, Asturias by Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz.  It was actually composed for piano as part of the Suite espanola, but it sounds so natural on the guitar, it might as well have been written for that instrument. The Falla Guitar Trio will play their arrangement of Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite from the 1920 ballet score.  Pulcinella was the first of the neo-classical ballets by Stravinsky utilizing old and new sounds.  The music was based on works by the early 18th century Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi and others but  was given a distinctive modern accent by Stravinsky. Uruguayan guitarist Eduardo Fernandez will play the lovely set of 6 Popular Catalan Songs by Miguel Llobet, the renowned Spanish guitar virtuoso who was a younger contemporary of Andres Segovia.  It's said that Llobet's playing style influenced Segovia, who then went on to a much longer and and stellar career, partly because Llobet died at the relatively young age of 59 in 1938. A guitar concerto by J.S. Bach?  We'll hear Australian born guitarist John Williams' arrangement of Bach's Violin Concerto No. 2 in E with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Kenneth Sillito in a fine old recording from the mid 1980's. To conclude the hour, Columbus native and world-renowned lute virtuoso Paul O'Dette will play some selections from his Harmonia Mundi compact disc of music by Daniel Bacheler, a lutenist and composer not as well-known as John Dowland perhaps, but now regarded as the most successful lutenist in England during his lifetime.