Some recordings are performances; this one is also a piece of scholarship. The Brazilian guitarist Luiz Mantovani plays Ferdinand Rebay's Sonate in einem Satz from the composer's own manuscript — a score that spent most of a century in a monastery archive.
Ferdinand Rebay – 400 works nobody played
Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953) was a Viennese composer, choirmaster, pianist and piano teacher. He was also, unusually for a musician of his background, passionate about the guitar: he wrote roughly 400 works for it — miniatures and sonatas, solo pieces, songs and chamber music.
That number is worth pausing on. It is more guitar music than most composers in the instrument's canon produced, written by someone whose name few guitarists would recognise. Much of it remained unpublished, and a large part of his archive survives at the Heiligenkreuz Abbey near Vienna. Rebay is one of the twentieth century's genuinely unopened doors.
The Sonate in einem Satz
The Sonate in einem Satz (Sonata in one movement) began life in 1901 as a piano work. Rebay later revised and adapted it for guitar himself — so this is not a transcription made by someone else, but the composer's own second thought about his own music.
Mantovani's performance is based on the autograph manuscript obtained from the abbey's music archives, and it comes directly out of his continuing research into Rebay's guitar music: work that began during his doctorate at the Royal College of Music in London and continues at the State University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis. He is the author of the entry on Rebay in Grove Music Online.
About Luiz Mantovani
Luiz Mantovani performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician in Brazil and abroad. He won the Pro Musicis International Award in New York in 2002, and in 2011 received a Latin Grammy for the album Brazilian Guitar Quartet plays Villa-Lobos; he has also recorded for the Delos and Stradivarius labels.
Alongside performing he holds a PhD from the Royal College of Music, publishes in peer-reviewed journals, received the Best Paper Award from Musicologica Austriaca in Vienna in 2022, and has taught at the State University of Santa Catarina since 2003. The combination is rarer than it sounds: most rediscovered repertoire reaches the concert hall through players who read the sources themselves. For more Brazilian guitar, see our guide to Villa-Lobos.
The Guitar: Hermann Hauser III
Mantovani plays a 2004 Hermann Hauser III — the third generation of the German dynasty whose instruments Andrés Segovia made famous. A Hauser is a fitting choice for Viennese music of this period: clear, focused and even across the registers, without the weight that would blur Rebay's counterpoint. Read more in our profile of Hermann Hauser III and our article on Hauser guitars.
The recording was made at the Alliance Française in Florianópolis, Brazil.
Watch the Performance
For more rediscovered repertoire, browse our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
