Vasilina Shashkova is a young classical guitarist originally from Moscow, Russia, now based in Italy. She began playing guitar at the age of six and graduated with honors from the Odoevsky Music School in Moscow. She received the Moscow Government Prize for Art and Culture for young musicians and has won competitions in Russia, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania and South Korea.
In 2023, Shashkova won First Prize at the 8th Masterclass Competition at the Accademia di Musica Stefano Strata in Pisa under Maestro Aniello Desiderio. The same year she took First Prize at the Concorso Internazionale Niccolò Paganini in Parma. She currently studies at the Conservatorio Domenico Cimarosa in Avellino, Italy.
About the 24 Caprichos de Goya
The 24 Caprichos de Goya, Op. 195 is a solo guitar cycle composed by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco in 1961. The composer dedicated this work to his son Lorenzo and described it as his most ambitious guitar composition. The cycle is inspired by the famous series of etchings Los Caprichos by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, created between 1797 and 1799.
Goya's original etchings depict satirical scenes criticizing Spanish society of the 18th century. Castelnuovo-Tedesco selected 24 of these images and transformed them into musical portraits for the classical guitar.
Capricho No. 18: Y se le quema la casa
The eighteenth piece in the cycle is based on Goya's etching titled Y se le quema la casa, which translates to "And His House is on Fire." The original image shows a disheveled man, seemingly intoxicated, oblivious to the flames around him. According to manuscripts at the Museo del Prado, the etching was intended as a criticism of drunkenness and negligence.
In his musical setting, Castelnuovo-Tedesco captures the chaotic atmosphere of the scene through texture, rhythm and harmonic color. The movement requires both technical control and interpretive sensitivity from the performer.
About Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born in Florence, Italy in 1895 into a Sephardic Jewish family. He studied at the Cherubini Royal Conservatory and became a prominent composer in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1932, he met guitarist Andrés Segovia at the Venice festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music. This meeting began a creative partnership that resulted in nearly one hundred works for guitar.
Due to the anti-Semitic racial laws under Mussolini, Castelnuovo-Tedesco emigrated to the United States in 1939 with assistance from Arturo Toscanini and Jascha Heifetz. He settled in Los Angeles and worked as a film composer for MGM and other studios, contributing to approximately 200 film scores. His composition students included Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams and André Previn. Castelnuovo-Tedesco died in Beverly Hills in 1968.
