The Georgian-German guitarist Gvaneta Betaneli plays Choro da Saudade by Agustín Barrios Mangoré on a 2009 Kazuo Sato Prestige. With nearly a million views it is one of the most watched recordings on our channel.
About Choro da Saudade
The choro is a Brazilian popular form that grew up in Rio de Janeiro in the late nineteenth century, a lively instrumental music with a fondness for syncopation and sudden turns of harmony. Saudade is the Portuguese word for a longing that has no exact equivalent in other languages: a bittersweet missing of something absent. Barrios brings the two together in a piece that dances and mourns at the same time.
The writing asks for a rhythmic lightness that never tips into haste, and for a singing melody that keeps its melancholy even in the brighter passages. It is a good example of how Barrios took the music of the continent he travelled and turned it into concert pieces that remain completely idiomatic for the guitar.
You can hear a different reading of the piece in our article on Isabella Selder playing Choro da Saudade.
About Agustín Barrios
Barrios, born in Paraguay in 1885, was the first guitarist to make records and a composer whose catalogue runs from South American dance forms to studies in open admiration of Bach. For decades his music lived on the edge of the concert repertoire; today it stands at its centre. Our portrait of Agustín Barrios and our Barrios repertoire guide introduce his music.
About Gvaneta Betaneli
Betaneli discovered the guitar at the age of three and at thirteen became a soloist of the State Philharmonic of Georgia. She studied at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire and, supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, completing a master's degree and an artistic diploma there. Since 2013 she has taught classical guitar at the Frankfurt Music School. In 2018 she won an audition in Frankfurt for a scholarship from the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now foundation, which brings live music to people who rarely have the chance to attend concerts.
Barrios asks a lot of any player. His music needs technical control for the fast figures and, at the same time, a sense of song for the melodies that hold each piece together. Choro da Saudade is a good test of both, because the dance rhythm and the melancholy line have to run side by side from the first bar to the last.
The Guitar
She plays a 2009 Prestige model by the Japanese luthier Kazuo Sato. Our article on Kazuo Sato and Hideo Sato introduces the workshop, and you can see the instruments in our Kazuo Sato collection.
Watch the Performance
Find more works in our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
