A concert celebrating the legacy of the legendary classical guitarist, Julian Bream, at Wigmore Hall promises a great night for guitar aficionados.

Thibaut Garcia,

Continuing the legacy of the brilliant and pioneering British classical guitarist, Julian Bream, the equally brilliant French-born classical guitarist, Thibaut Garcia, joins forces with the award-winning ensemble, Quatuor Arod, to perform the world première of Leo Brouwer’s new guitar quintet, Cuban Landscape with Danzas, at the Wigmore Hall on Friday 21 November (7.30pm).  

Founded in 2013, Quatuor Arod enjoy a good working relationship with Garcia while enjoying a blossoming and globetrotting career. For instance, in the present season, they’re quartet-in-residence at the Mendelssohnhaus, Leipzig and with La Belle Saison (a French chamber music network that organises concerts and fosters young artists) and clarinettist, Pierre Génisson, they’ll be performing at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, whilst also visiting Brussels, Tenerife, Den Haag and Hamburg. 

They are also participating at the String Quartet Biennales in both Paris (Philharmonie) and Amsterdam (Muziekgebouw) where they’ll team up with Klaus Mäkelä, chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic. They’ll also team up with Quatuor Danel for concerts at London’s Southbank Centre and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Recently, the Danels took part in a series of celebratory concerts in Paris marking the centenary of Valentin Berlinsky, founder and cellist of the Borodin String Quartet. 

Prize-winners all the way, too, they took full honours by winning First Prize at the ARD International Music Competition of Munich in 2016 while a year earlier they were awarded the First Prize at the Carl Nielsen International Competition of Copenhagen and the First Prize at the European Competition of the FNAPEC Concours a year before. They participated in the BBC New Generation Artists scheme from 2017 to 2019 and became an ECHO Rising Star for the 2018-19 season.  

Signed to Warner Classics, Garcia’s celebrated for his poetic artistry and refined technique while Quatuor Arod – Jordan Victoria (playing a violin by Francesco Goffriller), Alexandre Vu (violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini), Tanguy Parisot (composite viola by Carlo Ferdinando Landolphi, Pietro Giovanni Mantegazza, 1775) and Jérémy Garbarg (cello by Giovanni Battista Ruggieri, circa 1700) – offers a delightful programme at the Wigmore Hall traversing centuries of guitar music ranging from classical masterworks to contemporary innovation. 

A legendary Cuban composer, conductor and classical guitarist born in Havana in 1939, Leo Brouwer (Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida) is a legend in his own lifetime. He started out on the guitar at the tender age of 13 through the encouragement of his father, an amateur guitarist. Later, he was taught by Isaac Nicola, a student of Emilio Pujol, who, in turn, was a student of Francisco Tárrega. By the age of 17, Brouwer performed publicly for the first time and took up composing. 

As part of his musical education, Brouwer ventured to the United States to study at the Hartt College of Music of the University of Hartford and later attended the Juilliard School where he studied under Vincent Persichetti and took composition classes with Stefan Wolpe.  

In 1970, Brouwer played in the Berlin première of ‘El Cimarrón’ by Hans Werner Henze and together with Morton Feldman he was awarded a 1972 scholarship by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) working as a guest composer and lecturer at the Academy of Science and Arts of Berlin. In Germany, Brouwer flourished and duly recorded a significant number of LPs for Deutsche Grammophon.  

In his early compositions, Brouwer (known for a series of studies entitled ‘Etudes Simples’) remains close to the rhythms of Cuban music while later he was drawn to ‘aleatoric’ music, a composition technique where some aspect of the work being performed is left to chance or at the performer’s discretion. During the 1960s and 70s, he became interested in the music of modern composers such as Luigi Nono and Iannis Xenakis using indeterminacy in works such as ‘Sonograma I’. 

Other works from this fruitful and glorious period include the guitar pieces ‘Canticum’ (1968), ‘La espiral eterna’ (1971), ‘Parábola’ (1973) and ‘Tarantos’ (1974). Brouwer’s works often lean towards tonality and modality while his solo works ‘El Decamerón Negro’ (1981), ‘Paisaje cubano con campanas’ (1986) and ‘Sonata’ (1990) – written especially for Julian Bream – exemplify this tendency. Sadly, his playing career came to an end in the early 1980s due to a tendon injury in his righthand middle finger. 

He has transcribed Beatles songs for classical guitar and has also written for guitar, piano and percussion as well as being a composer of a host of orchestral works and ballet scores and, indeed, music for over 100 movies including the film Like Water for Chocolate, a 1992 Mexican romantic drama directed in the style of ‘magical realism’ based on the début novel of the same name published in 1989 by Mexican novelist, Laura Esquivel. 

Brouwer has also performed and recorded works by Sylvano Bussotti, Maurice Ohana, Cristóbal Halffter, Leni Alexander, Cornelius Cardew and Heitor Villa-Lobos and has conducted symphony orchestras such as the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Córdoba Symphony Orchestra while being involved in the Concurso y Festival Internacional de Guitarra de la Habana (Havana International Guitar Festival and Competition). He frequently travels to guitar festivals throughout the world especially in Latin American countries. 

A grandson of the Cuban composer, Ernestina Lecuona y Casado, Brouwer’s great-uncle, Ernesto Lecuona, composed ‘La Malagueña’ and his second cousin, Margarita Lecuona, ‘Babalú’ which was popularized by Cuban musician and actor, Desi Arnaz. Also, the great uncle of Al Jourgensen of ‘Ministry’ fame, Brouwer fathered five children and is the brother of Jourgensen’s maternal grandfather 

Interestingly, the name ‘Brouwer’ is rare in Spanish-speaking countries but a common name in Holland. Therefore, from his father’s side of the family, his grandfather was Dutch. Therefore, in 2009, Brouwer visited Holland (‘the country of my grandfather’) to conduct a selection of his works. 

Apart from the world première of Brouwer’s new guitar quintet, the Wigmore concert also includes El decameron negro (The Black Decameron) composed in 1981 for American guitarist, Sharon Isbin, receiving its première in 1983.  

Belonging to the new compositional period that Brouwer calls ‘hyper-romanticism’, the work’s three movements correspond to a ballad: ‘The Warrior’s Harp’, ‘The Lovers’ Flight Through the Valley of Echoes’ and ‘The Ballad of the Maiden in Love’. The titles correspond to a group of legends from sub-Saharan Africa collected by the German anthropologist, Leo Frobenius, at the beginning of the 20th century. Essentially, the narrative speaks of a warrior wanting to become a musician. 

Promising an exceptional and lovely occasion, this Wigmore Hall concert is presented in association with the Julian Bream Trust which has supported Garcia in his emerging career. The Trust’s mission is to encourage and support the creation of new repertoire for the classical guitar and to foster young talent in the spirit of Julian Bream’s lifelong commitment to musical excellence.  

As an aside, the Wigmore Hall is a venue closely associated with Julian Bream who played the venue on many occasions throughout his long and illustrious career therefore this concert by Thibaut Garcia and Quatuor Arod makes it a very special concert all round.  Programme highlights include Mauro Giuliani’s ‘Grande ouverture’ Op.61; Isaac Albéniz’s ‘España ‘Op.165 (Malagueña); Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet in C major, G 453 and, of course the couple of pieces by Leo Brouwer. 

Although born in Toulouse, France, Thibaut Garcia’s Spanish origins have notably influenced and enhanced his style. An award-winner, too, he gained the First Prize of the Guitar Foundation of America 2015 and in the same year he received the Prix Filleul of the Académie Charles Cros. He has performed for the French TV show ‘la boîte à musique’ and was invited by the musician, Jean-François Zygel, to perform on France Musique in December 2015 in a programme hosted by Gaëlle Le Gallic.  

Influencing Julian Bream as a young man was Belgian guitarist, Django Reinhardt, who inspired him to take up the guitar. He even named his dog ‘Django’. Bream, therefore, began his lifelong association with the guitar by strumming along on his father’s jazz guitar at an early age to dance music on the radio.  

He became frustrated by his lack of knowledge of jazz harmony, so he read instruction books by Eddie Lang to teach himself. His father taught him the basics while the president of the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, Boris Perott, gave him further lessons while his father became the librarian of the Society thereby giving young Bream access to a large collection of rare music 

Enjoying a career spanning more than six decades it was duly marked by Bream’s exceptional artistry and tireless exploration of new repertoire while still being dedicated to established composers. He inspired new works by Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Michael Tippett and Hans Werner Henze while revived early music through his championing of the lute. His unique sound and interpretative depth continue to resonate with guitarists and audiences alike. 

One of the 20th century’s most influential guitarists, Julian Bream, CBE, played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument and over the course of a career that spanned more than half a century, he also helped to revive interest in the lute. He founded the Trust that bears his name which commissions numerous works for guitar while supporting composers and performers alike in advancing the instrument’s repertoire. Past collaborations have included Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Malcolm Arnold as well, of course, Leo Brouwer.  

On his 11th birthday, Bream was given a small gut-string Spanish guitar by his father. He became something of a child prodigy at 12 winning a junior exhibition award for his piano playing thus enabling him to study piano and composition at the Royal College of Music. He made his début guitar recital at Cheltenham on 17 February 1947, aged 13 and in 1951, he made his début at the Wigmore Hall.  

In November 2001, Bream gave an anniversary recital at the Wigmore Hall celebrating 50 years since making his début there in 1951 and in the same year he made his first visit to Norwich at St Stephen’s Church Hall while his final recital took place on 6 May 2002 at the Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich, the city in which I was born and still live. I attended both concerts. Such is life! Such is history! 

Full details from Wigmore Hall website.