Well hello folks! This week I’ve been on my travels again with my work, so that means I’ve been away from my guitar – eeek! Hah hah! All good – sometimes I feel it can be quite beneficial to have an enforced small period away from the instrument. Beneficial, that is provided that I’m using the time I would otherwise be using for practice to do other music and/or guitar related things.

And so this week I have been carrying out research into the piece I’m currently learning -Frederic Mompou’s Suite Compostelana. Over the last couple of months I’ve slowly but steadily been getting the first movement of the Suite, the Preludio, under my fingers, making sense of the music’s direction and shapes, getting to know its “feel”, exploring different sounds.

Whilst I’m going through this initial exploratory phase I don’t tend to listen to any recordings of the music, so as not to influence my own thoughts and perhaps intuitive feelings about a piece. Once I’ve started to form up some ideas, however, I do like to then explore again some other interpretations.

So this week has been a perfect time to do that. And so aided by a wonderful set of new headphones, to enjoy the sounds to their fullest (and not annoy the folks in the hotel room next door by playing the same piece over and over!) I’ve been listening to various recordings of the Preludio from Mompou’s Suite Compostelana thanks to the wonders of Spotify and YouTube. Attempting to do this a number of years ago whilst travelling would have a clumsy exercise lugging around a number of CDs and CD player!

I thought I’d share with you all my favourite recording thus far. It’s by a Portuguese guitarist byt the name of Gil Fesch (previously unknown to me until this week). Here’s a video of Gil playing movements 1 to 3 (Preludio, Coral and Cuna) of the Suite Compostelana by Frederic Mompou: