Modern masterworks for choir and guitar

The Program

The season begins at the Source

Our 41st season opens with Rivers & Streams, a program that features two modern masterworks for choir and classical guitar. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s iconic Romancero Gitano, Op. 152, based on the vivid poetry of Federico García Lorca, is a landmark of the choral repertoire, blending folk-inspired melodies with the evocative, virtuosic voice of the guitar. Corrado Margutti’s Rivers was commissioned by Nicolò Spera in 2020 and is specifically intended to be paired with the Romancero. A secular oratorio on the theme of plurality, Rivers explores the fluid textures of a range of poetic texts set against the intricate, shimmering colors of the guitar. Corrado Margutti is a versatile Italian composer, tenor, and choral conductor whose music is celebrated for its lyrical beauty. His seven-movement work, Rivers, addresses the very timely, multifaceted theme of migration, the search for a homeland, and the construction of identity through a plural human experience.

What You’ll Hear

Two works, and the rivers inside them

Drawn from Artistic Director Tom Morgan’s notes to the singers.

Corrado Margutti — Rivers, Op. 104 (2020)

Seven movements, six languages, and a libretto assembled from poets writing a century and a half apart. It opens in a small square with children singing, framed by a returning refrain — clear stream, serene fountain — while an adult voice listens from outside that innocence and wishes itself back into it. From there it moves through Turoldo’s plain, unsparing meditation on standing beside people the world has forgotten; through Pascoli’s night of returning worries, which ends at dawn with the speaker a stranger in an alien country; and into Pessoa, wandering from river to river looking for one where his heart could rest, and finding that every river has two banks and no place to stop.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco — Romancero Gitano, Op. 152 (1951)

Seven Lorca settings, written in Los Angeles by a composer who had been driven out of Italy. It begins with three rivers: the Guadalquivir running through Andalusia between orange and olive trees, and Granada’s two smaller streams coming down from the snow — one of tears, the other of blood. Then the guitar itself, weeping monotonously and impossible to silence, described at the end as a heart wounded by five swords — the guitarist’s five fingers. Then a dagger, pivoting twice on a single refused cry. Then a Holy Week procession: hooded figures who look like unicorns and then like astronomers, the Virgin of Solitude sailing down the street as if on a tide, and a dark Christ passing over scorched earth and slow water.

The newer work opens by quoting the older one. Neither composer planned the symmetry between them — one wrote about exile because he was living it, the other wrote about migration sixty-nine years later — but it is there, and it is the reason these two pieces share a program.

More on both works, the composers and the poets: What to Listen For at Rivers & Streams.

Featured Artist

Nicolò Spera

Guest artist Nicolò Spera joins Ars Nova Singers for all three performances.

Italian guitarist Nicolò Spera brings to his teaching and performing a unique synthesis of European and American traditions.

Nicolò is one of the few guitarists to perform on both six-string and ten-string guitars. He has published recordings of new works for guitar and choir, for solo 6-string and 10-string guitars, and for guitar and tenor; the complete guitar works of Maurice Ohana; his own transcriptions of Bach’s Cello Suites; selected works by Catalan composers Federico Mompou and Enrique Granados; a recording focused on the passacaglia form; and the complete works with guitar of Christopher Theofanidis.

A primary goal of Nicolò’s creative work is to expand the guitar repertoire. He has commissioned, performed, and recorded new works for guitar ranging from solos to programs with choirs, small ensembles, and orchestras. He has collaborated with composers from Europe and the Americas, including Carlo Boccadoro, Martin Bresnick, Carlos Cordero, Filippo Del Corno, Steve Goss, Corrado Margutti, Roxanna Panufnik, Annika Socolofsky, Giacomo Susani, and Christopher Theofanidis.

Nicolò’s passion for choral music and his interest in new works for guitar and choir have also led him to a close collaboration with Tom Morgan and Ars Nova Singers, and Eugene Rogers and EXIGENCE Vocal Ensemble in the US, and with Giovanni Cestino and ITER Research Ensemble in Italy.

He has presented solo and chamber recitals, concerti with orchestra, and performances with choir for some of the oldest concert series in Europe and for major guitar events worldwide, including the Sanremo Guitar Festival, Festival Mediterraneo della Chitarra, and Festival Corde d’Autunno in Italy; Festival de la Guitarra de Sevilla in Spain; International Guitar Symposium at the University of Surrey in the UK; and concert series at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, Wolf Trap Filene Center, University of Michigan, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, University of Rhode Island, Vanderbilt University, and Belmont University in the US.

His most influential teachers are Oscar Ghiglia, Jonathan Leathwood, and Lorenzo Micheli. Nicolò holds degrees from the Conservatory of Bolzano and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy; an Artist Diploma in Guitar Performance at the University of Denver; and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado Boulder.

In 2011, Nicolò was appointed to the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is Associate Professor of Classical Guitar and Director of the Ritter Family Classical Guitar Program.

Read our conversation with him: Meet the Guest Artist: Nicolò Spera.