On October 31st, the Vancouver audience will have a chance to hear and see the great Italian master of classical guitar Carlo Marchione. As a VCGS tradition, we are publishing a short interview on our website. We sincerely thank Carlo for taking the time to answer our questions.
Welcome, Carlo! We are honoured to have you perform here in Vancouver. Could you talk a bit about your upcoming concert program?
Among others, I will present three pieces which are possibly even unknown amongst guitarists. First, the Vassiliev which is unpublished and dedicated to me, it’s a wonderful elaboration of themes from the piano concerto by Scriabin Op.20. I’ve played it for a year and people are restlessly enthusiastic about it. It’s a complex but easy to comprehend musical language that has lots of expressivity. I chose these pieces because….well, it’s like saying, why did you choose that menu for a date with a girl? You try to do something well and pick something that you think will work well, it’s a sort of ‘soul mate’ feeling. I also really want to play pieces that are unjustly unknown because they don’t yet belong to the grand ‘tradition’ of the guitar repertoire. It was always the point with this programme to play these pieces and through doing so inspire friends, students, and colleagues to play these composers which they hadn’t heard of previously. The rest of the programme will be the Luis Zea’s Lyrical Variations, which is an enormously expressive and powerful piece. It reminds me of the mood of the Mompou variations on a theme by Chopin for piano. Also I will play Ferdinand Rebay’s Sonata in A minor, an amazingly unknown composer who wrote over 600 works for and with guitar which have been discovered and published through the admirable work of Gonzalo Noqué from Eudora Music. I will also perform Fantasia Elegiaque Op. 59 by Sor, one of the greatest works ever.
Is there a difference between what you choose to present on stage and what you would play for your own enjoyment?
No difference. When I play on stage I actually play better than just for myself. The only pieces I don’t perform on stage are some strange transcriptions I sometimes do for myself or for knowledge of the piece.
Does your close circle of friends mostly include musicians?
Not necessarily, but unavoidably the majority are. We have a job in music and we love to talk about our job. My best friends are basically my students here in Maastricht.
How do you memorize your repertoire?
Read the complete interview Here