Johannes Tonio Kreusch plays Villa-Lobos & Ginastera

"Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera, as driving forces of the Latin American modernist movement, composed with relative restraint for the "national instrument" of their homeland. In Ginastera's case, the Sonata Op.47 is the only work he ever wrote for the guitar. Yet both have enriched the guitar repertoire with the music heard here. Without a doubt, the Etudes by Villa-Lobos and the Sonata by Ginastera are among the most important works written for the guitar in this century. In this music, both composers reveal a deep and direct commitment to the culture and history of Latin America and bring tradition into fruitful contrast with new ideas and sounds of their modernist world ... This meeting of such different cultures, this flickering between supposedly great opposites and this merging of European (avant-garde) music, often strongly influenced by the intellect, with the music of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, which arose from archaic originality, form the starting point of the work of these two composers and find an even more pressing clarity in their works for guitar".