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Music open thread: Guitar concertos [1]
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Date: 2025-06-02
I’ve long known about American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land.” It has come up on Jeopardy! a few times. And that was the extend of my knowledge about Woody Guthrie. I didn’t know about his song “Tear the Fascists Down,” which is unfortunately might be quite relevant these days. Nor did I know that he put a sign reading “this machine kills fascists” on his guitar.
The guitar seems to be the accompanying instrument of choice for half the singers who are also songwriters, such as Taylor Swift. In this open thread, though, I’m more interested in music in which the guitar is accompanied by an ensemble, rather than accompanying a singer.
Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Concierto del Sur deserves to be better known. I first heard it in a recording by Sharon Isbin, you can probably already guess which concerto I actually bought the disc for.
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Definitely have to include Joaquín Rodrigo. There is no shortage of great recordings of the Concierto de Aranjuez on YouTube. I had meant to listen to a couple and choose one, but didn’t get around to it. I prioritized higher to include something else by Rodrigo, deciding on the Concierto Madrigal, which is for two guitars and orchestra.
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For a long time I thought that Elmer Bernstein’s Concerto for Two Christophers was for two guitars, even though I have the recording in which Christopher Parkening is the sole soloist. Bernstein so titled the piece as an homage not just to Christopher Parkening but also to Bernstein’s colleague Christopher Palmer, who worked on orchestrations for Bernstein and other film composers.
In this video of a performance with a soloist other than Parkening, the sound engineering leaves a lot to be desired, but the musical performance is energetic and compelling. There’s a minute of applause, tuning and waiting at the beginning of the video, but since the guitar starts out pianissimo, I decided it wasn’t worthwhile trying to cue this up to right when the music starts.
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Even when you have four guitars, it might still be a good idea to amplify them, as in this video.
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The open thread question: What is your favorite music with guitar solos?
Please feel free to bring up music with electric guitar, even though this thread so far only has acoustic guitar music (though amplified in some cases).
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