Andrea Belmonte: Latin Within
KHA Records

Being entirely performed on a single instrument by the young Italian classical guitarist Andrea Belmonte, Latin Within can't help but be an intimate and nakedly exposing affair. But in featuring works by twenty composers from nine different countries, it's also extremely rich in tone and stylistic range. The selections are collectively representative of twentieth-century Latin guitar repertoire and extend from popular songs to classical pieces and from material flavoured with elements of the tango to Afro-Cuban jazz.

A number of the pieces and composers are familiar throughout the world, but many will be new to non-aficionados of the genre. Probably the best-known are “La Paloma” and “La Cumparsita” by Sebastián Yradier and Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, respectively, and works by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Leo Brouwer also appear, but their four constitute a fraction of the pleasures the release affords. Playing an Alessandro Marseglia guitar (2022), Belmonte recorded the set, his follow-up to 2021's Vocal Cords, across three days in June 2022 at Abbey Rocchi Studios in Rome. He's comfortable playing in any number of contexts, from baroque to jazz and flamenco, and it shows in the ease and assurance of these performances.

With the album weighing in at fifty-two minutes, the twenty selections are generally short and to-the-point; most last one to two minutes at a time, with only six pushing into the three- to four-minute range. Such brevity naturally makes for an ever-stimulating and rapidly shape-shifting programme. Delights are abundant, be it the infectiously slinky moves of Manuel Aróztegui's “El Apache Argentino,” Ángel Gregorio Villoldo's sunny “El Choclo,” or the beguiling radiance of “Sons de Carrilhões” by João Pernambuco, one of the founders of the Brazilian guitar school. Ear-catching too are “Tango en Skaï” from the Tunisia-born Roland Dyens, who as a young boy moved with his family to Paris, and “Natalia” (from Cuatro Valses Venezolanos) by renowned Venezuelan guitarist and composer Antonio Lauro.

Offsetting the uptempo pieces are delicately spun exercises in yearning and melancholia, such as “Te Vas Milonga,” “Evocación,” and “Milonga” by Argentine guitarists Abel Fleury, José Luis Merlín, and Máximo Diego Pujol, respectively. Similarly gentle in spirit is “El Testament d'Amelia” from Spanish guitarist Miguel Llobet's 10 Canciones Populares Catalanas. Argentina-born Jorge Cardoso, who wrote more than 350 works for solo guitar, is well-represented by the tender “Milonga” (from 24 Piezas Sudamericanas), as is Mario Gangi, the most popular Italian guitarist of the second half of the twentieth century, by the serene dignity of "Studio No. 11 in G Minor.” Livelier by comparison is Villa-Lobos's thoroughly endearing “Chôros No. 1, W161.” Certain pieces call on Belmonte's virtuosic command, Augustín Pio Barrios Mangoré's “Allegro solemne” (from La Catedral) and Efrain Silva Quince's “Estudio con Pajarillo” (from Estudios Venezolanos) two memorable examples.

July 2024