Ana Vidović: belief

Transcript context

…Say, Beethoven doesn’t typically work well on classical guitar, right? What technically makes Bach feasible for your performances? Is it the limited dynamic range? A lot of it also has to do with the quality of the arrangement. Obviously, Bach didn’t compose for guitar, so we have a lot of arrangements, and that’s when the arranger comes in. You have to be familiar with the classical guitar, how it works. I perform a lot of arrangements by a Croatian arranger, Valter Dešpalj, who is actually a cellist. He comes from a different world, but he understands guitar very well. On a cello, you cannot bring all these voices out as clearly as on a classical guitar. I think that’s part of it. You can bring the bass line. You can bring the middle line. You can bring the upper line very, very clearly. That’s part of it, but also, as a performer, you have to find ways to make it interesting. Like I said, all the voices come out very, very clearly. I think that’s number one. Obviously, as a guitarist, we don’t have a lot of repertoire. We have beautiful pieces that were composed originally, but mostly from Spain. There is a lot of Spanish repertoire for guitar, but Bach in itself is a challenge. Why is Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal so successful a piece for classical guitar?…

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