Manuel Barrueco - 300 Years of Guitar Masterpieces (1991, comp.)

 

The booklet holds little original recording information, but this constitutes basically an anthology of some of Barrueco’s initial, by then long and widely unavailable, recordings, from the late 70's, early 80's – ranging from Bach, Scarlatti and Cimarosa, to Villa-Lobos, Guarnieri and a Carlos Chávez gone wild, and including Albéniz and Granados (some of my favourites here; particularly the Spanish Dances, which Barrueco would come to record again, beautifully, in their entirety), but also Giuliani and Paganini (more in the virtuoso meh department). Still, a nice spread.

Those recording dates, in the early years of his career, may have something to do with the near absence of production values (not) to be heard, contributing to a very dry sound which underscores Barrueco’s distinctive picking technique: very terse, with the strings in maximum tension, making him sound here, even more than usual, like he’s playing with barbwire. In his case that is not necessarily a bad thing, though. Unlike most classical guitar recordings, which favor echo-laden environments, like churches, to enhance the instrument’s feeble sound projection, this sounds very direct and close captured. Every note stands pretty much naked before us, with practically no reverb (from itself, the previous or the accompanying notes) to shroud it. It is as if he was playing right beside you, and all that proximity gives him no room to hide any shortcomings, which actually grants him the opportunity to show that wiggle room to be something he had no need for in the first place. The rollercoaster renditions of a few of Villa-Lobos' Estudos, particularly, go for a technical suspension of disbelief, that actually unravels new textural ground in some of them (still, the Suite Popular Brasileira sounds anaemic by contrast, so there was still some interpretive room to grow - as he would later show with his benchmark recording of the 5 Prelúdios). 

A guy who can put most guitarists playing in cathedrals to shame while he sounds off in the pantry: that’s Barrueco for you, and he was just getting started.