Appreciation by Ron Mitchell

Unfortunately Yvonne was not able to be with us, being 'indisposed', as musicians say, with Covid. We were very grateful that her husband Ian was able to step in and deliver the talk that Yvonne had prepared. But we did miss hearing Yvonne herself play as she had planned to do.

Ian began with some historical perspective. Up until about 1900 the guitar had been a folk or parlour instrument, a strummed accompaniment to a singer or dancer. For example as depicted in countless paintings of lovers serenading their would-be mistresses below their windows.

It was Francisco Tárrega at the turn of the 20th century who pioneered the modern classical style, playing on a larger instrument and developing techniques such as tremolo, harmonics, sounding notes with the left hand only, etc. We heard a cylinder recording of Tárrega around 1900, full of rumble and noise, but through which could be heard the ghost of a sweet melody.

Other pioneers such as Miguel Llobet followed and then came the great Segovia, who brought classical guitar to international recognition. He hugely increased the repertoire of the instrument, commissioning new works from many composers. He didn't always like what he got however, and Ian told the amusing story of the two differing accounts of what happened one time when Segovia and Villa Lobos argued about a difficult new piece that the latter had written. Each of them claimed that he had demonstrated to the other how it was possible to play it.

Segovia influenced a whole generation of guitarists such as John Williams and Julian Bream. We heard Julian Bream tell how his father brought home a 78 record of Segovia playing 'Recuerdos de la Alhambra'. The young Julian was so spellbound by it that it was then that he decided that this was what he wanted to do in life.

We heard Bream and John Williams in duet play another famous piece, the first Spanish dance from de Falla's La Vida Breve.

Bream himself went on to create a school of English guitar playing, commissioning much work from composers. One was from William Walton and Ian told how after several weeks the notoriously slow composer had only managed six notes - and they were just the six open strings of the guitar. But the eventually completed 'Bagatelle No. 1' turned out to be a splendid spritely piece, as we heard, complete with the brief six-open-string strum at the start.

Of course we heard a concerto—NOT the one everyone knows but the concerto by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He was Italian but fled the Fascist racial laws in 1939 to America, where, as well as composing, he became an influential teacher. Among others he taught film composer John Williams and, delightfully, Scott Bradley, who composed the witty background music to the Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Yvonne, Ian told us, has always been keenly interested in women guitarists, still rather a minority. We heard the Austrian Luise Walker from the 1930s, and the contemporary Croatian Ana Vidovic in a phenomenally fast and clean Bach Lute Suite prelude.

Also the extraordinary Nicola Hall, whose technique astonished Yvonne when she first heard it. And us, as we listened to her play a Hungarian Fantasy by Joseph Kaspar Mertz. Her CD, 'The Art of the Guitar', was, on Yvonne's recommendation, the first CD I ever bought when I acquired a CD player. Sadly, after only a short career in the 1980s and 1990s, Nicola developed focal dystonia (involuntary muscle movements in the hand) and had to retire from performing. Ian said that focal dystonia affecting hands and wrists is quite common in musicians. Many have to take a break from performing and subsequently return. But Nicola has not returned.

Appropriately, we ended by hearing Yvonne herself, in her recordings of two of her own compositions, 'Absent Friend' and 'Promise'. The latter of these was broadcast recently on BBC Radio Leicester as 'chill-out item of the week'.

It was a shame that Yvonne was not present in person with her guitar, and we wish her a speedy recovery. But Ian did a splendid job, presenting with interest and humour a fascinating insight into the instrument which, in the right hands (and the right left hands), can truly sound like 'a small orchestra'.