Italian
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The Italian guitarist and composer Ganesh Del Vescovo, today considered a virtuoso of the classical guitar, began his guitar studies as a self-taught musician. An important meeting with Alvaro Company, a pupil of Andrès Segovia, brought him to follow Company’s courses at the Conservatory of Florence, where he graduated with full grades, cum laude and honourable mention “for his extraordinary skill in portraying the character and mood of the pieces performed.”
He widened his experience as a musician by attending Master Classes of guitar held by Oscar Ghiglia, Eliot Fisk, Pepe Romero and Edoardo Fernandez at the “Amici della musica” in Florence and was much appreciated for the maturity of his performing art. Pepe Romero described him as a “magnificent guitarist and musician.”
Throughout his career as concert musician he has concentrated on the many periods of the guitar repertoire − Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern and Contemporary − but his interest in music has never been limited only to pieces written for the guitar. In fact he has developed a personal technique of transcription to the guitar of compositions written for other instruments and his concert repertoire includes his own transcriptions of authors such as Bach, Frescobaldi, Scarlatti, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy.
Straight from the start Del Vescovo’s activity as a composer developed at the same pace as the study of the instrument itself. Throughout the years he has continued to experiment new guitar techniques, and has also developed a very personal musical concept, partly inspired by his meeting with Indian classical music and musicians. Rather than using the more formal aspects of this tradition, he freely draws inspiration from the aesthetic experience, the spirit and the strength of expression of this musical world. He also plays the sarod, an ancient Indian string instrument, and the tabla, and has composed original pieces for both. His approach to composition, which has developed through the exploration of sounds, rhythms and timbres which carry the musician and the listener to particular inner moods and atmospheres, has inevitably led to the necessity to modify the classical guitar. Two new instruments were thus created: the “Chikari Guitar” and the “Sarod Guitar”, which have the function of a flexible drone and which also allow a free use of glissé techniques and a very deep non-tempered sound effect. He has presented these instruments, showing their relative techniques, in various guitar Festivals and events. He has also given many Master Classes and Seminars relative to the techniques he has explored.
He has performed as a soloist in many concert halls in Italy and abroad and has also played pieces by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Boccherini, Paganini and others, in ensembles. He has given the first performance of Ballade, Notturno, Il Concerto catalano and Quattro pezzi in memoria by Alvaro Company as well as Circo Minore by Sylvano Bussotti.
Publications of the music of Ganesh Del Vescovo include: with Sinfonica Nuova Carisch, Sei Studi accompanied by a cd interpreted by the composer; Dodici studi di transizione accompanied by a cd interpreted by the composer; Tre studi giovanili; Tre reminiscenze per chitarra; Jasidih Express; Sandhya; and, for guitar and flute, Three Dhuns. He has also recorded a cd of his own music published by the same publishing house. The guitarist Andrea Vettoretti has recorded, for Phoenix Editions, Tre reminiscenze and Sei studi di transizione. The Tre reminiscenze are present as well in the concert repertoire of Kazuhito Yamashita, who also gave the first performance in September 2005, in Nagasaki, of the composition dedicated to him called Suite “alla montagna”. In January 2006, in a concert in Tokyo, the same musician performed Ganesh Del Vescovo’s transcription for guitar of Schubert’s “Six moments Musicaux” on occasion of their publication by Gendai Guitar. Besides this the Guitar Quartet “con bambini” of the Yamashita family keeps compositions specially written compositions in their repertoire. In 2009 a dvd of the author’s music has been published by Guitarmediacollection.
The great Italian poet Mario Luzi has written about him:
“Throughout the years I have heard Del Vescovo play many times on different occasions and have always felt I had entered into an enchanted sphere made up of the emotions and feelings of a beautiful musical talent: a very personal sphere which communicates and has moments of radiance.”
Florence − november 2008