This is a much older filmed studio performance Than those I have previously posted. Maybe just after The War, about 1947 or so. One reason I am assuming that, although if I were not so lazy and dug around and scrolled down on the Youtube I would probably find a date, is that he is not playing a Jose Ramirez guitar, I am going to assume that this is the Hauser instrument which he played before The War. So Segovia made a really big change in how he perceived what his ideal sound was and how he had to change in order to perform in ever larger halls to ever bigger audiences. His erstwhile impresario/manager was the brash but insanely great PR hack Sol Hurok, who produced some crucial Segovia concerts that catapulted his career into the top echelons of the Classical musicians world. Hurok had some legendary artists in his stable. During Huroks long and illustrious career he managed Marian Anderson, Irina Arkhipova, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Feodor Chaliapin, Van Cliburn, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, Margot Fonteyn, Emil Gilels, Horacio Gutiérrez, Jerome Hines, Isa Kremer, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, David Oistrakh, Anna Pavlova, Jan Peerce, Andrés Segovia, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Galina Vishnevskaya, Efrem Zimbalist,and many others. But I digress....It was Segovias huge success under the steady hand of Hurok which made him want to be heard more as a pianist or cellist is heard in the concert hall. But the guitars of prewar design did not have the big full sound, projection and volume of the guitars being built by Jose Ramirez. in Madrid. So Segovia was of course a huge catch for Ramirez ( I have a 1984 Jose Ramirez 1A which is rumored to have been build especially for Segovia, but was never picked up by him). To have Segovia play Ramirez exclusively was like the relationship between Rubinstein and Steinway Pianos. The main features of the Ramirez 1A are the size of the fingerboard which is bigger and on some years had a square shape to the neck and the longer scale length which requires more tension in the string. Now that no one has a clue what I am talking about, doing that to a guitar makes it louder with a bigger sound. So that guy who paid $$$ for a ticket in the third balcony can still hear the performance. Unlike John Williams who uses amplification for his concerts, Segovia never did, and he played some huge venues. So, here is a performance that is more like the pre-war sound. It is not as rich and full as his later recordings and he has got what Glenn Gould called bits of business in the music which give some of these performance their eccentric tempo changes and pauses. But watch those incredible fingers fly! This is a relatively young mans playing if you consider that Segovia was still touring the world giving concerts right up to his death at age 94. Enjoy. https://youtube/watch?v=rjRLpE_TzdA
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:35:53 +0000
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