The AEON Guitar Duo — Giovanni Barbetta and Martina Cincotta — was founded in 2025 and has already collected several first prizes at national and international competitions. Eliot Fisk has called the ensemble "superb". The duo's artistic focus lies exactly where this recording sits: on the orchestral and contrapuntal possibilities of two guitars, with particular attention to the Italian repertoire.
For Siccas Media they play Prelude and Fugue No. 14 from Les Guitares bien tempérées by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
About Les Guitares bien tempérées
The title is a deliberate homage: Les Guitares bien tempérées, Op. 199 is Castelnuovo-Tedesco's answer to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier — a cycle of 24 preludes and fugues for two guitars, one pair in every key. He completed it in the early 1960s for the legendary duo Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya, whose ensemble playing was so refined that composers began writing for two guitars as though for a single instrument with twelve strings.
The cycle is one of the most ambitious contributions to the guitar duo literature ever written, and it makes a demand that guitarists rarely face: real, audible counterpoint. In a fugue, each voice must remain distinguishable — entries have to be shaped, inner lines have to be heard through the texture, and two players must breathe as one. It is exactly the kind of writing that reveals whether a duo is two guitarists or one ensemble.
About Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) was born in Florence and became one of the most important composers for the guitar in the twentieth century. His meeting with Andrés Segovia in Venice in 1932 began a partnership that produced close to a hundred guitar works. Forced to emigrate by the racial laws under Mussolini, he settled in Los Angeles in 1939, wrote for the film studios and taught composers including Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams and André Previn. Read more in our portrait of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and our repertoire guide to his guitar works.
Watch the Performance
Discover more of this composer's music in our article on Capricho de Goya No. 18, explore other ensembles in our profiles of great classical guitarists, and browse our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
