by Mike Telin
“The first thing I do before I contact a composer to ask them to write a piece is listen to their music. If it doesn’t speak to me, why would I spend the money and the time?” Italian guitarist Nicolò Spera said during a recent Zoom conversation. “And if it does speak to me, I think it can speak to anyone.”
On Sunday, June 7 at 1:00 pm in Mixon Hall at CIM as part of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, Spera will present a program of new works, four of which will be world premieres. Jonathan Leathwood will present a pre-concert lecture at 11:30 am. Tickets are available online.
Spera said that all of the composers on his program have two things in common — a dazzling imagination and a sense of refinement. “I find that I’m drawn to music that has this inner elegance, which to me carries depth. And all of these composers only write what is really important. If something is there just to show off, then it doesn’t become part of their music. So this program isn’t meant to be a statement about new music, it’s just very beautiful, genuine music that happened to be written in the last few years, or in some cases, in the last few weeks.”
Spera will open his program with the world premiere of Roxana Panufnik’s Canto. The guitarist said that he was aware that Panufnik was extremely busy and that getting her to write a piece for one instrument might be difficult. But while looking through her catalogue he discovered Canto for solo viola. “I looked at it and I loved it so I thought I would ask her if she thought it could work on guitar and with her approval, I would like to play it. We worked together on the transcription and she liked it and I love it. So that’s how it happened.
