Manuel Maria Ponce, arranged by Raymond Burley
Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate guitar part (8 and 3 pages respectively)
Here is a work by, surely, one of the guitar’s greatest ever composers, the Mexican writer Manuel Ponce, who of course wrote his first works for the great Andres Segovia, who helped him make sense of our complex instrument, when he couldn’t play the guitar , and never learned it later on either. So many of Segovia’s composer friends couldn’t play the guitar either and that is often what makes their works so fascinating.
But surely one of the most prolific was Ponce. This piece exists in a solo guitar version, and then a version for guitar and harpsichord, and both have been published before but the duo version has always been quite a rare piece, even though I can still remember recorded versions I had once on vinyl, including the great John Williams’ version with Rafael Puyana on harpsichord. The score version was out some decades ago in a Mexican publication but this latest one edited and fingered by Ray Burley is beautifully done and a very clear read. Interestingly there are a number of places where, as ossia, Segovia’s alternative guitar parts are included in small print above the actual score, in case anyone wants to try out that section as edited by Segovia.
I need to go no further into its detail, because lovers of this piece will know it already, and although there can’t be hundreds of guitar/keyboard duos, anyone in that situation will definitely love to get their hands on this timeless piece of writing.
Chris Dumigan
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