From the liner notes of the new FRESH! From Reference Recordings release Andrés Segovia Archive: Spanish Composers featuring guitarist Roberto Moronn Pérez:
Gaspar Cassadó
The great cellist Gaspar Cassadó was a friend and keen follower of Segovia, dating back to his youth, and during the course of his brief but inspired activity as a composer, took up the guitar. He celebrated special moments and events with pieces that he wrote for the instrument and which express not just the enthusiasm for those moments but also reveal a truly personal artistic ability. Included in this CD are some of the most important pieces written for the instrument by the composer, born in Barcelona, an instrument which he placed second only to his beloved cello.
The Catalanesca of 1922, while recalling the popular regional dance, showed early signs of the breadth of the twenty five year old’s musical scope and vision
which clearly embraced French music with some Central European influences. Cassadó was well aware of the fact that his writing was at times impenetrable and might not be best suited to the guitar and so in the subtitle of his composition he pointedly wrote in Catalan: “per la guitarra (si en Segovia no mana lo contrari).” Canción de Leonardo, on the other hand, written in 1951, has a very intimate feel: a feuille d’album in which the author outlines a very tender melody—with delicate harmonies—in remembrance of Segovia’s second son who died in an accident at a young age.
Segovia’s appointment as teacher at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena, warmly greeted by Cassadó, was celebrated in 1951 with Sardana Chigiana: a both proud and subtle piece which the dedicatee was to make famous by recording it on one of his discs. In 1965, the composer returned to the rhythms of the Catalan dance and produced a quite elaborate piece with an Introduction written in the form of a Recitative. Structured in two parts, Preámbulo y Sardana is both humorous and bright. The peak of Cassadó’s guitar music comes with Leyenda Catalana, without a date, but certainly belonging to the composer’s later period; a piece which returns to the theme of the popular song entitled El noy de la mare which he cleverly elaborates and weaves into his own personal idiom. Certainly surprising is the Catalan’s decision to dedicate Dos cantos populares finlandeses to his Andalusian friend: the cellist had by then given up all composition which in his later years had become incompatible with his concert diary; we can but guess how this Scandinavian holiday between the two might have unfolded at the time.
— Angelo Gilardino, Scholar and General Editor of the Andrés Segovia Archive and former President of the Segovia Foundation.
Andrés Segovia Archive
Spanish Composers
Roberto Morronn Pérez
A Superb New Classical Guitar Recording