Andres Segovia - Leyenda

The greatest even in his late years a master!

I was fortunate enough to hear him play only a few years before he died. It was an intimate gathering with only perhaps two dozen invited. It was wonderful! He was so involved with the guitar and music he went right off the stage (maybe a six inch height). I was prepared to catch him. He never stopped playing. Marvelous!

I agree with Steve. I would even go further to say that the stops and starts in the rhythm are intentional. He strums the big chords, then lets them ring and hang there before returning to the tremolo. His playing is intimate and personal, and so focused on making the "orchestra" that is the guitar play and sing beautifully together. Even his choice of guitar, I believe, was driven by a passion for the beauty of the sound of the classical guitar. Williams plays with a smooth flow, but without the variety of tone, or bringing out the romance of the melody within the piece, and he plays that harsh sounding guitar (Smallman?), which it seems he chose for it's volume level and not beauty of tone. I love this recording, because you can hear in clear detail all the sounds Segovia is creating. Maybe Williams would sound better if recorded this way. Funny to imagine this intimate playing in giant concert halls with no amplification. I heard Pepe Romero once sitting way up in the rafters of a giant church. You almost had to hold your breath to hear him. You miss a lot.

Once when I visited Spain I saw inhabitants dancing on the street to the music played by some Spanish traditional band. I couldn't understand how do they catch this weird Spanish rhythms. This is same with Segovia. His version is not that accurate, not that fast as many others play, out of rhythm in some notes. But it's the one and only one performance like that. Original, soulful, very Spanish.