Nathan and Beau combined all that they learned about life, music, and people into a painstakingly crafted recording, ‘Departure’. A beautiful album of varied and highly emotive music where one travels from the evocative art of Villa-Lobos into the austere sexuality of John Dowland, until finally being snapped into the fever-pitched passion of traditional Flamenco. There's also a little southern comfort thrown in for good measure!

 

 

Winterreise was Schubert’s last collection of lieder composed before his death in1828, consisting of twenty four songs of despair and unrequited love. It is one of the most heart wrenching moments of the lied tradition. The transcription of the piano part to the guitar adds a new intimacy to these works but remains historically relevant to Schubert lifelong relationship with the guitar. Lacking a piano through much of his career, Schubert originally composed many of his songs on guitar and published them with piano and alternate guitar accompaniments. The original keys and general transparency of many of his songs are largely idiomatic to the guitar and utilize similar accompaniment figures used by his friend Giullani.

    Listening to Giuliani’s Sei Cavatine, it become immediately apparent that he was an avid fan of Italian opera. Often his many solo guitar compositions allude to the operatic devises of the time. These songs were admiringly set in the highly popular style of Gioacchino Rossini and  set by one of the most famous Italian librettists of the time, Pietro Metastasio. Each song in this collection seems to be an aria unto itself from a non-existing opera with simplistic guitar accompaniment that mimics the operatic orchestration of Giuliani’s era.

 

 

 

 

 

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