The Montenegrin guitarist Nadja Grdinic plays La Catedral by Agustín Barrios Mangoré — and she plays it twice, on two very different instruments: a José Rubio from 1965 and a brand new Charalampos Koumridis double top from 2025. Few pieces expose the character of a guitar as mercilessly as this one.
About La Catedral
La Catedral is the piece by which most guitarists first meet Barrios. Its three movements move from a quiet, singing Preludio through a chorale-like Andante religioso into a relentless Allegro solemne, and the whole work is held together by a single idea: the sound of a cathedral, heard first from outside, then from within, then in the rush of the street afterwards. The outer movements demand absolute evenness in the right hand; the middle movement demands the opposite, a legato line that never sounds plucked.
We have looked at the work in detail in our article on La Catedral as a masterpiece of the guitar repertoire, and our Barrios repertoire guide collects the other works worth knowing.
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 folk forms to studies written in open admiration of Bach. For decades his music lived at the edge of the concert repertoire; today it sits at its centre. Our portrait of Agustín Barrios follows that path.
The Two Guitars
The José Rubio No. 61 from 1965 carries a spruce top in French polish, a 650 mm scale and Landstorfer tuners. The name on the label is the professional name of David Rubio, who worked in Spain as a flamenco guitarist before turning to guitar making — and who built the instruments Julian Bream played from the mid-1960s onward.
Opposite it stands the Charalampos Koumridis 2025 Double Top No. 282: a cedar top over cocobolo back and sides, 650 mm scale, tuners by Klaus Scheller. Koumridis is a self-taught Greek luthier who built his first guitar for his daughter and today works in three model lines, traditional, lattice and double top. If you want to understand what separates the two instruments structurally, our guide to fan-braced, double-top and lattice guitars explains the construction.
Watch the Performance
You can hear Nadja Grdinic in different repertoire in our article on her performance of Cavatina by Stanley Myers, and browse the whole repertoire in our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
