Leonid Hrabovsky Duma Music : 39 pages Leonid Hrabovsky is a Ukrainian composer, born 1935, now living in the USA. Over the years he has written a great many pieces for all manner of combinations of instruments and voices but this book has his entire guitar solo works, which amount to 13 different pieces, spread over 4 actual works. The Night Blues is the first one. It is set in B Major and this one immediately has an opening page that is a mixture of octaves with the t

Joop Klein Goldewijk Bergmann Edition : 16 pages Goldewijk is a Dutch guitarist/composer (and also a painter).Here he has written a set of three pieces for our instrument that are moderately difficult, but not too much so. They are melodic and have, mostly a pattern that you will recognise. The Road is the first one, a three pager, set in 4/4 at 140 crotchets a minute, and having mostly a quaver rhythm with a crotchet usually at beat 4.After that the rhythm of the six quave

Nelly Decamp Les Productions D’OZ: 7 pages Here are three pieces that were inspired by Nelly Decamp’s life in Brasilia, a place where she lived for a while. Concha Acustica (Acoustic Shell) is a place that she discovered after a concert that had wonderful acoustics amid lovely scenery. The shortest of the three pieces it is a Largo, Libre et Sonore full of long exotic chords interspersed with some faster lines of melody that is a great start to this set. At the end of bar 1

Michel Cardin (arrangements and variations) Bergmann Edition: 12 pages Having just reviewed one of this man’s books for Baroque Lute, and saying that this was a rarity for me on my site, here is another, perhaps even rarer! It is a book of two pieces arranged for a Theorbo in A, and again is in tablature entirely. The first piece was written by James Oswald in the 18th Century and is a tune many of you will definitely know, Barbara Allan, and being the instrument that it is,

Michel Cardin Bergmann Edition: 12 pages Here is a rarity for my web – site, a pair of arrangements for solo baroque lute in tablature of two pieces that many of you will certainly know. There is a wonderful performance incidentally of Michel playing them in concert on his Baroque lute, and if any of you have never heard one of these marvellous instrument with their huge dynamic range, then give yourself 3 ½ minutes to listen . I am quite sure that having one of these instrum

Laurent Meneret Les Productions D’Oz : 12 pages There are seven pieces here, all quite different and all having a very musical sound, and sometimes not always moving melodically the way you might expect .Moreover they are not too difficult, so will suit the relatively modest players amongst you. Vagabondages incidentally means Wanderings, which does aptly describe the pieces when you play them. Au Fil de L’eau (Along the water) is a 4/4 in D Major, and a modest 69 crotchets

Laurent Meneret Les Productions D’Oz : 7 pages These two waltzes are modest in size and not too difficult to play and are dedicated to two of his family. Firstly, La Valse de Rose is dedicated to his granddaughter Rose and is set in E Minor at the speed of 46 dotted minims a minute. It is immediately quite pleasant to play and something that many will enjoy, especially as it doesn’t have modern harmonies as such, but is set in a style which players will enjoy. The style is

Lovland Rolf U. And Skavlan Petter arranged for guitar by Angelos Tsoutsis Bergmann: 8 pages I knew this tune straight away, and realised that when I had heard it before it had some words, but couldn’t bring it to mind. Turns out it was a piece of music by Secret Garden called Nocturne. This version for solo guitar uses the dropped D 6th as it is in D minor. Immediately it seems a little difficult in one or two stretches but they are easily got round with a bit of work. If

Benjamin Verdery Doberman – Yppan : 39 pages This extensive piece is, on the face of it, in two movements but with a number of themes cropping up in both. Not only that there are a few features of this piece that set it apart from most other pieces I have seen, namely, the way you have to set your guitar up first.The open strings are, from bottom to top, D, G, D, A, Bb, and E, but with the added instruction to place a capo on strings 1 to 5, in the first movement, leaving t

Louis Trepanier Les Productions D’Oz: 7 pages Here is one from a set of twelve concert studies, all published separately by D’Oz. This really is a study in every sense of the word, as there are numerous technical obstacles the player has to overcome before getting to grips with this piece, even though it is harmonically very clever and always interesting. The opening section is marked Lento, liberamente with a zero time signature, simply because everything is very free temp

Francis Kleynjans Les Productions d’Oz : 20 pages Here is a set of ten pieces from this French composer, who has written hundreds of works for guitar, as witnessed by the Opus Numbers of each of these pieces, ranging from Op416 to Op438,( although a few Opus numbers are not used in this set of 10). I have seen many pieces from this composer and they are always very playable, extremely melodic and full of nice harmonies and interesting fingerings that are not always what you

Arnaud Dumond Les Productions D’Oz: 16 pages This book of 12 moderately easy studies is part of a three book set that ranges up to difficult pieces by the end. I have already seen and reviewed the first book a couple of years ago, that was marked simply ‘easy’, and which I had nothing but good things to say about it This latest book is every bit as good as the previous one, with the first thing you notice being how varied the genres and techniques are that he uses and that th

Nejc Kuhar Les Productions D’Oz: 4 pages This short piece is all about memories and the nostalgia some create and in this piece our composer has made all the music sad, emotive and very pleasant to play. It’s set in D Major with a dropped 6th to D and is a Lento 4/4.It is all in 2 voices but the main thing about the piece are the rhythms he uses, often setting one against the other . The opening melody starts almost immediately without an introduction over a rocking bass li

Kevin Swierkosz – Lenart Les Productions D’Oz :12 pages This Italian composer’s latest piece is in three movements and is a homage to the figure and work of Louis Claude de Saint – Martin, a French philosopher, with each of the movements having a title from his work. L’Home de Desir, is a Moderato, con Grazia and is a 4/4 movement set without key signature, but obviously not in C Major, or A minor as it seems at times to be in B Minor, but why the composer didn’t want

Jean – Marie Raymond Les Productions D’Oz: 6 pages Having seen many pieces by this French composer I am never disappointed by his beautiful works, always full of melody, lots of superb harmonisations, and giving the player a lot of enjoyment in the process. This latest work stems from his visit to Japan, where admiring the countryside, he imagined the sun setting in the evening, but dying in the process, only to be reborn at dawn the next day, and as a result the music is s

Mark Houghton Les Productions D’Oz: 22 pages I have seen many pieces by Mark Houghton, and this latest one is every bit as good .It is in 6 movements , and is descriptive of the New Forest in Hampshire, near where Mark now lives, a forest incidentally I remember very well, from my times holidaying with my parents ( yes! that long ago!) in Boscombe , near Bournemouth . The opening movement is Prelude : Morning Stroll, and Andante in A Major which is in 2, or sometimes 3 voic

Camilo Les Productions D’Oz: 4 pages This 3 minute piece apparently won the IX Concurso Internacional de Composition para Guitarra ‘Manuel de Falla’ It has a 1st string tuned to a quarter – tone under E, and a 6th string tuned to C. This in itself is a tad unusual, especially the instruction to not just tune string 1 to Eb, but to tune it a quartet tone lower than E, an instruction I have never seen before on any music . As for the title it translates as 19.05 – 5 minutes b

A.J. Scholz (rev.Giorgio Mirto) Les Productions D’Oz: 24 pages I must be honest that I have almost certainly never seen any music by this composer before .Arthur Johannes Scholz (1883 – 1945) wrote hundreds of guitar works and if this latest piece is anything to go on, it is a style that is extremely complex, never staying in one key for too long, and therefore the music has many accidentals and never goes where you expect it to. It is set in three movements, with the firs

Guy – Jean Maggio Les Productions D’Oz : 12 pages This book of 19 small pieces is aimed , as the Preface states, at the young beginner, aged approximately 6 years old, wishing to take their first steps on the classical guitar. This first repertoire is designed to be playful and progressive, and have been carefully written, observing the evolution of their skills and limited to solo melodies only. They follow a progression in the number of notes learned and are restricted to

Claudio Maccari Les Productions D’Oz : 8 pages There is a curious Preface that apparently explains the plot of this latest piece by Maccari, involving a heavy wind , a thunderstorm, a village party and someone falling in love and finally, and I quote, ‘ because Paganini is still blowing sarcastically’ After a very slow opening of 3 bars where the melody glides up and down the fingerboard, the main section , marked Allegro Ventoso takes over where the melody is often in l