So often, guitar duos are formed by musicians who begin their joint work at a very young age. Indeed, the family is often a foundation source for such musical encounters, sibling (Abreu, Assad, Katona) and couple arrangements (Presti-Lagoya, Siqueira-Lima) offering a powerful excuse for music to transpire. There exists, however, at least one other traditional seed for this ensemble: what one might call the “Williams-Bream paradigm”, the coming together, for a special recording, of two well-known soloists at the height of their careers.

The union of Italian Aniello Desiderio and Croatian Zoran Dukic ́ is of this latter kind: both have successful international careers as solo guitarists, but differently from Bream-Williams, they opted, from the get-go, to register a live performance as their first album together.

Recorded on October 11th, 2020 at the Kaisersaal of the Kurfürstliches Schloss of Koblenz, Germany, during the 28th edition of the Koblenz Guitar Festival & Academy, this work is one of the rare live musical recordings of the year 2020, one in which the coronavirus pandemic closed theaters, cancelled concerts, and made encounters of this kind practically unimaginable.

The program of the Italian-Croatian duo includes works originally written for orchestra (Manuel de Falla), mixed instrumental ensembles (Piazzolla), harpsichord (Scarlatti), piano (Albéniz, Granados) and original compositions for two guitars by Joaquín Rodrigo and Sérgio Assad.

Premiered in London in 1919, the ballet “El sombrero de tres picos” was one of the most careful theatrical productions of the Ballets Russes, company run by Sergei Diaghilev, well-known for having sponsored, in Paris, the scandalous first performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”.

Choreographed by Leónide Massine and with sets and designs by Pablo Picasso, this deep dive into Spanish culture included original music by Manuel de Falla (1876-1946).

The musical highlights are the dances attributed to the ballet’s three primary characters: El Molinero (the miller), La Molinera (his wife) and El Corregidor (the provincial authority). Two of these are interpreted here in an arrangement for two guitars by Graciano Tarragó (1892-1973): the famous farruca (“Danza del Molinero”), inspired by flamenco and danced by Massine himself at the premiere, and the “Danza del Corregidor,” structured as a minuet.

The opera “La vida breve” was completed by de Falla in 1905, but would only appear on stage in 1913. The well-known “Danza” – performed, here, in the arrangement by Emilio Pujol (1886-1980) – occurs in the beginning of the second act and its joy only acquires its proper melancholy color in context, since the marriage of Paco and Carmela is witnessed by Salúd, woman to whom Paco had sworn his love and now pretends not to recognize.

“Mallorca op. 202” is a piano barcarole written by Catalan composer Isaac Albéniz (1860- 1909) in 1891; the version chosen for this recording, in D minor (the piano original is in F# minor) was edited and recorded by the German guitar duo Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar.

The Malagueña “Rumores de la Caleta” is the sixth of the seven piano pieces that comprise Albéniz’s op. 71, titled “Recuerdos de viaje” (1887) in a clear homage to Liszt’s “Years of Peregrination”. Aniello Desiderio and Zoran Dukic ́ here, make use of the traditional guitar transcription by Miguel Llobet (1878-1938), which alters the tonal center of the piece from the original A to a flamenco E.

“Tahhiia Li Ossoulina” (Homage to Our Roots) is an original composition for two guitars written in 2006 by Sérgio Assad (1952) that celebrates the 125th anniversary of the arrival of Lebanese immigrants to Brazil. Besides use of Middle Eastern rhythms, the composer evokes certain improvisational aspects of oral tradition and writes in one of the modes (makam) of Arabic music. Registered by Duo Assad in the album “Jardim Abandonado”, the work was awarded the 2008 Latin Grammy in the category “Best Contemporary Classical Composition.”

By Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) the Desiderio-Dukić ́ duo performs, in arrangements by Emilio Pujol, the “Pastorale Sonata K.9 (L.413)”, shifted from the original D minor to E minor, and the “Sonata K.377 (L.263)”, which remains in the original key of B minor.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) composed “Lo que Vendrá” at the start of the 1950s, not long before his departure for Paris to continue his musical education. Desiderio- Dukic ́ perform the piece in a version for two guitars published by the Argentine guitarist Délia Aussel-Estrada. “Zita”, on the other hand, is the second movement of the “Suite Troileana” (1975) dedicated to the memory of the bandoneon player Aníbal Troilo (1914-1975), nicknamed “Pichuco” (“Zita” was the nickname of Troilo’s wife). The version for two guitars is authored by Sérgio Assad.

Premiered by Presti-Lagoya, Joaquín Rodrigo’s (1901-1999) “Tonadilla” quickly acquired canonical status in the guitar duo repertoire. If the initial “Allegro” employs a wide melodic range as well as exhibits various changes in harmonic color, the second movement, “Minuetto Pomposo”, evokes images of a long-lost Spain, majestic and classically baroque, a frequent presence in the compositional world of Rodrigo. Finally, the “Allegro vivace” displays an ingenious writing structure, one that anticipates the broken and virtuosic melodic lines that would become the hallmark of the repertoire made famous years later by Duo Assad. Highlights also include the scales performed at break-neck speed, typical of the guitar idiom of Rodrigo.

As an encore, the duo returns to piano repertoire: in their own arrangement, Desiderio and Dukic ́ perform the “Danza Española n.2 – Oriental”, which is a part of the cycle of “12 Spanish Dances op. 37” by Enrique Granados (1867-1916). The version transposes the original key of C minor to A minor.