New Releases Showcase the Expressive Power and Global Reach of the Nylon-String Guitar

Carlotta Dalia
Segovia
(Berlin Classics) 

Though still just in her mid-20s, Italian guitarist Carlotta Dalia has become something of an international sensation, and deservedly so. Her latest album, Segovia, shows her interpretive range, as she confidently takes on diverse repertoire that for the most part was closely associated with the immortal Andrés Segovia—either written for him, by him, or featuring his arrangements. And she plays it all on an incredibly rich-sounding 1939 Herman Hauser I guitar that Segovia owned (one of two surviving models). 

Dalia wisely steers clear of Segovia’s best-known works (except for Federico Moreno Torroba’s “Sonatina” and Joachim Turina’s “Fantasia Sevillana”), opting instead for less-played gems like the five-part Segovia-penned Anécdotas, and even a contemporary piece by Italian composer Enrico Melozzi that uses a piece by Baroque composer J.P. Rameau as a jumping-off point—Segovia often played Rameau’s “Minuet” from the opera Plateé. Another nice work that was new to me is Hans Haug’s “Alba,” which Segovia recorded in the early ’60s.

Mēla Guitar Quartet
Overtures and Dances 
(TRPTK)

By turns dazzling and deeply emotional, the UK-based Mēla Guitar Quartet’s most recent offering truly shows the beauty, depth and power of the underappreciated guitar quartet art form. Comprised of founders Matthew Robinson and George Tarlton, along with newer members Zahrah Hutton and Michael Butten—all of whom play guitars made by veteran British luthier Michael Gee—the extraordinarily nimble ensemble seems to play as one entity, with eight hands in perfect synch and sympathetic resonance.

As the album title implies, the repertoire this time out is devoted to pieces that have “a theatrical element in opera, ballet, or dance.” So, for instance, the five-part Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) began its life in 1910 as a Maurice Ravel piano duet (four hands right there!) and later was orchestrated as a popular ballet. The thrilling arrangement of “Samson et Delilah” comes from Camille Saint-Saens’ late 19th-century opera of that name. 

The lone contemporary work, by Joe Hisaishi, is a playful suite of musical thoughts in varying styles from the 1988 anime film classic My Neighbor Totoro. Among the other composers represented are Debussy and Rachmaninoff. The virtuosity of all four players is on display throughout, but it’s never showy, and indeed some of the album’s most powerful moments are quiet, lyrical, and surprisingly spare. 

Dale Kavanagh
Dale Kavanagh and Friends
(Naxos)

I mostly know this extraordinary Canadian guitarist and composer through her long musical association with her husband, German guitarist Thomas Kirchhoff, in the Germany-based Amadeus Guitar Duo, who seem to have no musical boundaries at all—they’re comfortable playing any style from any era, as their extensive discography shows.

This time around, though, Kavanagh highlights ten of her own pieces—a few solo, others with help from such skilled and internationally known guitarists as Aniello Desiderio (Italy), Zoran Dukić (Croatia), Margarita Escarpa (Spain), Frank Gerstmeier (Germany), Sümeyye Ergün (Turkey), Laura Young (Canada), Liying Zhu (China) and, yes, hubby Kirchhoff. 

Kavanagh is a superb composer, adept at penning multi-layered works that move naturally through different moods and various melodic and rhythmic approaches. There is a strong traditional and contemporary folk undercurrent to many of these pieces (several have what I would call a “Windham Hill” feel), and though there are a few that also borrow from more modern musical lexicons, everything here is highly accessible—a lovely melody is never far away. Played on her Antonio Müller guitar, every track feels like a journey that goes someplace interesting, making for a wonderful and compelling album from beginning to end. 

George Sakellariou
Winding Road 
(Self-released/Bandcamp)

I confess that I was not familiar with Tennessee-based classical guitar teacher/composer Lawrence W. Long before hearing George Sakellariou’s previous album, Vintage Sakellariou (2023), on which two attractive Long pieces shared a CD with the likes of Bach, Grieg, Tárrega, Sor, and Villa-Lobos. The 80-year-old Sakellariou, originally a native of Greece, has a formidable background as guitar educator himself—he was the first head of the guitar department at the esteemed San Francisco Conservatory of Music and still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Sakellariou’s latest album, Winding Road, finds him playing 14 short—all under three minutes—solo guitar works by his friend Long, who passed away at the age of 88 in 2023. The recordings were made at Guitar Salon International’s main showroom during three sessions in 2021 and 2022, with Sakellariou performing each on a different guitar, ranging from historic models by Antonio Torres and Robert Bouchet to a whole bunch from the 2000s. (All are listed in the album’s liner notes.) 

Long once noted that in essence he wrote pieces for his students that were “developmental in style difficulty as well as pleasing to the ear.” Indeed, it’s easy to imagine any of these pieces finding their way into a fingerstyle player’s repertoire. And most are not that simple, either. Many have demanding lower-register lines that require great dexterity, and a couple feature difficult tremolo passages. There is a nice stylistic variety from track to track, from blues to Latin-flavored numbers to Spanish-influenced moments to American folk notions, all tied together by Sakellariou’s exquisite guitar mastery.