Radamés Gnattali - Sonata for Cello and Guitar

- - - - Intro : [00:00] I. Allegretto comodo [00:05] II. Adagio [04:29] III. Con spirito [08:05] - - - - Cello : Déverson Correia Guitar : Ana Clara Guerra - - - - Radamés Gnattali was a Brazilian composer of both classical and popular music, as well as a conductor, orchestrator, and arranger. He began to play the piano with his mother at the age of 6, and went on to learn the violin with his cousin Olga Fossati. When he was 9 he received an award from the Italian consul for conducting a children’s orchestra in arrangements of his own. In the following years, he also learned the guitar and cavaquinho and started playing these instruments in a successful group called Os Exagerados, as well as at silent films and dances. In 1920, at the age of 14, he entered the School of Fine Arts at the University of Rio Grande do Sul, where he studied with the musicologist and piano teacher Guilherme Fontainha (a student of Vianna da Motta), eventually winning a gold medal for piano playing in 1924. He then moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he gave a series of successful piano recitals, while also studying at the National Music Institute. His lifelong association with Ernesto Nazareth, the renowned composer of Brazilian national music dates from this period. Back in Porto Alegre due to lack of money, Gnattali founded the Quarteto Henrique Oswald, in which he played first as a pianist and then as a violinist. A 1929 performance as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s B-flat piano concerto, played with the orchestra of the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, was praised in the press but did not lead to a long-term career as a concert pianist. Instead, Gnattali began a career in Rio as a successful conductor and arranger of popular music—activities which tended to divert his attention from other genres. Financial needs led him to work for radio stations and record companies as a pianist, conductor and arranger of popular music. His background music for radio serials and his clever arrangements of the tunes and dances of the day made him a successful figure.