Tag: Stringed

Expanding your guitarist horizons – Florian Larousse

Nicole Neal1 Comment

Hands up who likes listening to the “old masters” of the guitar? Recordings of Segovia, Williams and, of course, Bream? Lots of Bream!

Yup, me too. And the likes of Isbin, Parkening, Bonell and so on.

Nothing wrong with that, but if that’s all you’re listening too (and I’ll put my hands up to having been guilty of it in the past) then you’re really limiting yourself. Limiting yourself in terms of the fantastic approaches some of the newer and up-and-coming players on the scene have to well-trodden repertoire. Limiting yourself in terms of listening to some really beautiful tone production, approaches to shaping and phrasing and playing the music we love. Limiting yourself in terms of exploring forgotten repertoire that some of the newer players are bringing to light again, as well as newer repertoire.

By investigating some of the newer players you can have all of this, as well as exposure to improved recording technology which really brings out the nuances in the respective players’ interpretations. So, I’ve begun a bit of an exploration myself recently of some of the crop of the new generation of guitarists bursting onto the classical guitar stage and thought I’d share with you. The first of the young guitarists I’ve been really getting into recently is Frenchman Florian Larousse.

He’s a young whippersnapper, born in France in 1988, and began studying guitar in 1996 at age 8. He continued on to study at the Conservatoire National de Region de Paris and then the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris in 2006, studying with Roland Dyens and Judicael Perroy.

As the winner of the 2009 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) competition he recorded his recital under Naxos’ Laureate Series, which is a recording well worth checking out. Larousse plays with a fantastically warm and round tone, a great deal of clarity and sensitvity in his playing. I would go so far as to say that his interpretations of Dowland’s “A Fancy”,  “Lachrimae Pavan” and “Fantasia in G Minor” are now my favourites.

Check the album out: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572565 It’s also on Spotify too (my new favourite music app!).

And here are some videos to whet your appetite…. Bon appetite!

 

A change to today’s post….

Nicole Neal2 Comments

Hi Folks,

well, today’s first has lead to another first! I have removed today’s guest post from the site. The reason being the guest post sent through to me contained a link to product that I didn’t know anything about and so I made the editorial decision of removing that link prior to posting. The guest poster wasn’t happy about this, so I offered to removed the article.

I only talk about or feature things on the blog that I have tried out for myself and would recommend to my own students, colleagues or other guitarists. As such I didn’t feel that the link was appropriate for the blog.

You, dear readers, are of paramount importance to me, as is the trust that you place in me. One of the key objectives for this blog (actually THE objective for this blog) is to help others – help you – if and where I can, sharing my own lessons learnt and experiences, to shape and follow your own path of learning on the guitar. It is not about selling products, particularly those I have no working knowledge of, or getting quick links and clicks through to other websites for random peeps. Yes, I’m aware that this kind of things happens in the blogging world, but that’s not what Classical Guitar n Stuff is about.

Classical Guitar n Stuff is for you. It’s about learning and developing. It’s about promoting new as well as existing guitar playing talent and exploring the myriad wonders of the classical guitar.

Nicole

PS – to offer you something interesting and useful today instead here’s a fantastic video I found recently of a Pavel Steidl masterclass for you – I’m definitely going to give these exercises a whirl….. I wanna play like Pavel!!