Donia Foglia plays the Fantaisie Op. 30 by Fernando Sor on the Siccas Luthiers Halo Traditional — the first extended piece of repertoire recorded on our newest model, and a deliberate choice: Sor is where a traditionally built guitar either speaks or does not.
About the Fantaisie Op. 30
Sor's fantasies are not improvisations in disguise. They are carefully built pieces in which an introduction, a theme and a chain of variations are held together by a composer who thought in four voices even when writing for six strings. The Op. 30 runs for over thirteen minutes in this performance, and the difficulty is less in any single passage than in sustaining the architecture: every variation has to sound like a consequence of the last.
What makes this repertoire unforgiving on record is its transparency. There is no wash of resonance to lean on. A note that is not voiced is simply a note that is not there.
Sor wrote at a moment when the guitar was still arguing about what it wanted to be — a salon instrument, a continuo instrument, or something that could hold a recital on its own. His answer was to write as a composer first and a guitarist second, and the Op. 30 shows it. The variations are not display pieces strung together; each one takes a different view of the same material, and the piece ends because the argument is finished, not because the fireworks have run out.
About Fernando Sor
Sor, born in Barcelona in 1778, was the first composer to give the guitar a body of work that stands comparison with the chamber music of his time. He wrote operas and ballets as well, but it is the guitar music — the studies, the variations, the fantasies — that kept his name alive. Our portrait of Fernando Sor introduces the composer, and our article on the Sor studies covers the works every student meets first.
The Guitar
The Siccas Luthiers Halo Traditional takes the Spanish guitar as its musical reference: a spruce top over Indian rosewood, a 650 mm scale, a 52 mm nut and Der Jung tuners, at around 1,500 grams. Siccas Luthiers is our own line, developed in-house with a team of experienced luthiers and players. Each Siccas Luthiers guitar undergoes a careful setup and final inspection in our workshop in Karlsruhe before being shipped to our customers.
We introduce the model in detail in our article on the Halo Traditional, and the whole range is described in Siccas Luthiers guitars.
Watch the Performance
Explore the workshop line in our Siccas Luthiers collection, or browse the repertoire in our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
