This one is deceptively difficult to record. I used to play this one maybe 5 years ago, and you could just play the movements back and forth as they feed into eachother with no real direction - conveniently useful as background music. But when recording it becomes extremely stressful working hard not to distract yourself in terms of where you are in the music because it repeats so many times! I must have recorded it maybe 10 times where all the sections were good until the final repeat and I'd just realize to myself "wow this one could be the one..." Klunk - aaaaaaand its gone. This recording isn't perfect either, and its immensely frustrating how a missed string on a super easy part will make me have to go all the way back to the beginning. I am getting better at recording though. I actually was having more success when not even thinking about what I'm doing - the minute I start to wonder what chord comes next or thinking maybe I should play a little quicker or slow down here or there I would absolutely make a mistake. When I just let my mind wander even the most difficult parts go much more smoothly! This one is also 6 minutes long, so congratulate yourself if you make it thru the whole thing.
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer who wrote orchestral, chamber, and works for solo instruments - he was great because he synthesized Brazilian folk music with European classical forms. This one is a Gavot which was a French folk dance that became popular during the Baroque period, which also means gavots were also composed by none other than JS Bach! So even though Bach would apply his genius to a simple dance form - the roots are still in folk music. I think its becoming more and more clear that folk music is going to become my expertise maybe on both classical and acoustic guitar. Although I do want to try making dance music... Anyway, Norbert Kraft is a monster, and his CD effortlessly navigates all of Villa Lobos' most famous guitar pieces.
Ishida