Brighton Year-Round 2026
Maurizio Baudino Recital St Nicholas Church, Brighton
Maurizio Baudino
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Maurizio Baudino makes a welcome return to St Nicholas with pre-festival vibes and an idiomatic guitar recital. That is with works written for the guitar and (mostly) not adapted. It’s important as the actual guitar repertoire from the golden age of around 1800-1960 deserves as full an exploration as possible. And of course some later classics
Throughout Baudino’s playing is international standard and in the best sense you’re not attending to him, but the music. Superb.
Review
Maurizio Baudino makes a welcome return to St Nicholas with pre-festival vibes and an idiomatic guitar recital. That is with works written for the guitar and (mostly) not adapted. It’s important as the actual guitar repertoire from the golden age of around 1800-1960 deserves as full an exploration as possible. And of course some later classics. There’s a debut CD available afterwards, from as long ago as 2000.
It should be staged at once that Baudino is a master who’s carved out a niche for himself exploring the less obvious and more idiomatic guitar repertoire.
Prior to all this Pressburg-born but Viennese resident Johan Kaspar Metz (1806-1856) is the least known. He nominally follows the older Sor and Giulini but is more than an important bridge. Sor followed Haydn and Mozar Guilini Rossini ad Italian opera. Metz followed Beethoven, and his own younger contemporaries Schumann and as we’ll see Mendelsssohn. Apparently Metz accidentally poisoned himself with strychnine in 1846 trying out a cure. Confined for two years to his bed he heard his wife the famous pianist Josephine Plantin practising these composers; and spent time composing with her pianism in mind, transposing that to the guitar. One fruit was his ‘Barden-Klange’ or ‘Bardic Sounds’ Op 13. Op 13/5 “Fingals-Hohle” is certainly intriguing suggesting the same ‘Ossian’ poetry that inspired Mendelssohn, three years to his junior but far more precocious. It’s an atmospheric opening succeeded by a later congenial ‘Le Gondolier’ Op 65/3 that seems now to shadow Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. Baudino understands the delicacy and draws it as far from its envelope as needs be.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was forced to flee Italy when anti-Semitic persecution became intolerable. Known for the guitar he wrote Violin Concertos (No 2 ‘The Prophet’ is still celebrated) and overtures to eleven Shakespeare plays.
It’s a surprise to learn that Segovia commissioning and playing on an industrial scale asked Castelnuovo-Tedesco to scale down he complexities if his Tarantella so he could master it quickly. It’s still a beguiling and witty piece full of idiomatic tuneful sideslips. Again Baudino delights in this.
Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)is famed in the guitar world for the amount of music transposed for guitar from the piano, his own instrument. His Capricho Catalan is a melodic gem, one of his quietly profound utterances.
Julian Bream commissioned William Walton (1902-83) to write five Bagatelles quite late, in 1971. They prove classics “Alla Cubana” seems to pay homage to Augustine Barrios the Cuban composer. Like the Castelnuovo-Tedesco it’s full of gleams and harmonic sidelights with Walton’s fingerprints present but less insistent than elsewhere in the series. It’s good to hear it, being more elusive and sounding at home here in Baudino’s hands.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is not only Brazil’s greatest composer but one of the greatest for guitar. It was his own instrument. He wrote his Suite Populaire Brasilienne (here first the Mazurka-Choro) early in, before his 1920s Paris years. It’s tuneful and memorable, slanted with a gentle melancholy and nostalgia you don’t always see later in. Yet there’s a mastery of guitar figuration including some strange chordal swipes in the Mazurka. Moving from Poland to the Scottish-Choro there’s a memorable tune, somewhere shrouding a Scottish snap with a welter of Latin.
Augustine Barrios (1885-1944) is a classic of the guitar repertoire. His La Cathedral is a far perkier and more Sunday strolling piece than the escorial you might imagine. Naggingly memorable it’s half flirt and half winsome innocence. Insouciant too perhaps. It’s written like a waltz turned into a quick-step. Almost.
Argentinian A Piazolla (1921-92) is famed for his tangos. But his range is far wider. His Cinco Piezas contain glances and facets of is other writing but here in the ‘Romantico-Acentuado’ is exploratory and within stretched tonal limits (always tonally prone on the guitar) explores some modern (not modernist) harmonies. Ones you might hear in the ambient world he created which got(like other 20th century tribal and guitar music) absorbed into film music.
There’s certainly a harmonic wash and a beguiling sense of space and society de vive if France can intrude into Argentina for a moment. But certainly a Cafe Life is hunted at. Refracted from the subject matter. The throw-away end is a delight.
Baudino draws some super-fine playing with magically quiet touches here. Throughout his playing is international standard and in the best sense you’re not attending to him, but the music. Superb.
