Although
John Williams
recorded a wonderful album of it in the 1990s, the guitar music of
Agustin Barrios
has been underexposed except for a few pieces that turn up as encores. This is a shame, for his music is not really like that of any other Latin American guitar composer. It embodies a deep fusion of vernacular music with European influences, and it has an unusual religious strain. The vernacular influences heard on this superb release by guitarist
Thibaut Garcia
include not only broadly popular dances like the waltz, the mazurka, and the Brazilian maxixe but also specifically Paraguayan folk music. Transcriptions of
Chopin
,
Beethoven
, and
Schumann
break up the program, and one of
Barrios
' most famous pieces, the three-movement, Bachian
La Catedral
, stands at the album's pinnacle. The religious works are both instrumental and spoken, and there is one piece that incorporates
' own poetry, with the titular poem read by
Orlando Rojas
. There is a certain mood of mystery that adds an X factor to
' music, and it is intensified here by the inclusion of a 1928 recording of
himself. His playing seems reflected in
Garcia
's own, and that is truly all to the good. ~ James Manheim