Word: segovia
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They laughed when Andres Segovia sat down to play the guitar. The nerve of the ( man, bringing a flamenco instrument into the hallowed precincts of the concert hall. "That stupid young fellow is making useless efforts to change the guitar -- with its mysterious, Dionysiac nature -- into an Apollonian instrument," wrote one skeptic after Segovia's 1910 debut in Madrid. "The guitar responds to the passionate exaltation of Andalusian folklore, but not to the precision, order and structure of classical music...
That assessment was, to say the least, inopportune. When he died last week at 94 in the Spanish capital, Segovia had put the guitar on a near equal footing with the piano, violin and cello as a solo concert instrument; he had also won for himself a place among the most influential performers of the 20th century...
Sitting quietly, almost motionlessly onstage, protectively cradling his six-string Hauser guitar, his left hand moving swiftly and smoothly across the frets, his right hand flicking the strings gently with its fingernails, Segovia was a picture of concentration. A Segovia recital was as hushed as a whisper, as rapt as a prayer. "If people have even a little understanding," he once said, "it is better to move them than to amaze them...
Born in Linares, a village in southern Spain, young Andres briefly studied the violin. But his teacher was a harsh martinet, and Segovia was unmoved by the sound of the instrument. "The violinists and cellists I heard in the Granada of that time seemed to extract catlike wails from the violin and asthmatic gasps from the cello," he wrote in Segovia, his 1976 memoir. "But even in the hands of common people, the guitar retained that beautiful plaintive and poetic sound...
...find such a strong cast, the Argentine impresarios Hector Orezzoli and Claudio Segovia searched southern Spain, the home of flamenco, for the best performers, rather than for glamorous people who could be taught the steps. The result, as in the Tango revue, is a largely middle-age troupe that, by show-biz logic, should cause audiences to snooze in their seats. But nobody snores during this evening, and those superannuated singers and dancers are exhilarating and, yes, sexy...