I went to the Soler guitar recital on Saturday at the SMU Meadows Museum. It was a free concert and it was just held in one of the longer exhibition halls — the staff set up some chairs and the surrounding art gave a pleasant ambience to the recital.
I arrived at the museum around 2:30pm in order to ensure that I could get a good seat. Sure enough, I was able to get a second-row seat. And, with no one sitting in front of me, I had a clear view to the performer. The concert was scheduled to start at 3pm and it nearly did.
As 3:00 rolled around, there were a few introductory words by the organizers, including an introduction by the museum’s curator. At least, I’m guessing that it was an introduction — he spoke entirely in Spanish. I later read in the program that the concert was in commemoration of National Day of Spain, which explained both the Spanish introduction and the many Spanish-speakers in attendance.
After the introduction, Soler strolled in and took his seat. His seating arrangement was rather modest — his chair was the same as the audience chairs and his only peripheral was an angled foot-rest. After tuning his guitar, he began his set (all of which were by Spanish and South American artists).
I’ve always enjoyed classical guitar and Soler’s Spanish guitar was particularly pleasant. I was probably no more than three meters from him and I was able to appreciate his guitar technique as much as the music itself. In such a beautiful environment, the music seemed to just flow around me.
Most of my experience to classical guitar has been through CDs. So, I’m not sure if this is atypical, but Soler didn’t use a guitar pick but rather strummed the strings with his fingertips. More than that, Soler also used his guitar for percussive accompaniment — from time to time, he tapped and thumped on his guitar with the fingers and palm of his right hand. Impressively, he occasionally continued playing pizzicato with his left hand while adding the beat with his right hand.
The recital lasted about and hour and a half and Soler added about three encores after successive rounds of applause from the audience. After the show, he walked off stage to pack up his guitar (which really meant that he walked to an adjacent room in the gallery since there wasn’t actually a stage in the first place).
He seemed approachable and so I walked up to him and introduced myself. I didn’t want to take too much of his time, but I expressed to him how much I enjoyed his recital. He smiled graciously and thanked me for my comments (I’m not really sure if he spoke that much English).
In all, this was just what I needed for a Saturday afternoon. And, the price (which was free) was hard to beat. On my way out, there was a table setup selling some of his CDs and guitar tablature books. Considering that I paid him nothing for the concert, I was only too pleased to buy one of his CDs (if you’d like to hear a track, I’d be happy to send you an Ogg or MP3).
I was friends with some of the classical guitar majors in college; if I recall one of them actually went to Spain one summer to study with Soler.
Plucking with the fingers is standard; using a single pick (like you see in most popular guitar music today) is good for strumming solid chords but makes playing any kind of polyphonic music pretty much impossible. Some players use a clip-on pick on each finger (though I’ve mostly just seen that on banjo players) but all the guitar majors I knew kept the fingernails on their right hand grown long. It was kinda gross if you ask me. ;-)
Wish I could have gone to the concert with you, that would have been fascinating to hear and see. Glad you got the opportunity to go.
Jason is right about the single pick. I’ll add that some Country Western and Blue Grass guitarists use a technique that requires multiple finger picks. The guitar is my favorite instrument … so versatile. Now I only need to learn how to play it!
Theres a lot of argument about whether classical guitarists should grow there nails long or not. A lot of Spanish players do but then again Segivia had short nails so that he could angle his fingers and get either a soft ‘flesh’ tone or a hard ‘nail’ tone or somewhere inbetween. Some players trim there nails completely to get a flesh tone.
Country players also use a technique whereby they use a pick between thumb and finger and also pick other strings with their 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th finger. This creates the sort of syncopated feel common in bluegrass music.
Folk guitarists either grow nails or use plastic/steel fingerpicks
Personally I’m a fingerpick and short nails guitarist although I don’t play as much classical as I would like.
Seeing a spanish/classical guitarist live is a moving experience though, myself and my fiancee have a guitarist playing at our reception which will probably mean I won’t be in any photographs or be talking to any guests, just watching… dumbstruck :-)
You left this post sooo long ago, but I had to comment. I saw this same fellow a year after you in Tacoma and he was awesome. I am not a connoisseur of guitar so I don’t have anything to compare him to, but he was breathtaking. Sadly I can’t find anything online that will play a sample of his music… I wanted my husband to hear how beautiful Francesc de Paula Soler’s playing is.
I love your post I too was first taken by the Classical Guitar when I saw a real expert play. In my case it was John Williams in the Abbey, Cathedral, Church of St Albans where I was at school, and it was again free to me at least as a member of the school. I was fortunate enough to be sat in the aisle side seating as John played in the aisle. You can imagine my surprise when he seated himself in line with the row I was in! He was so close I could touch him! He was really pleasant and we all got to talk to him afterwards.
I was 14 at the time and now at 56 I am still an avid fan. If you want to hear some really great music his duets with Julian Bream are hard to beat.
Keep listening to the Classical Guitar it is an awesome instrument.