Tag: Manuel de Falla

El Llanto De La Guitarra, Samrat Majumder, Wigmore Hall, 14 April 2026

A delicious lunchtime concert of classical guitar. Samrat Majumder is a young guitarist who is clearly going places. He played an interesting programme of music spanning five centuries, although the 17th and 18th missed out in the jump from renaissance to classical/romantic periods.

We heard:

  • Luys de Narváez – Canción del Emperador
  • Alonso Mudarra – Fantasia No. 10
  • Fernando Sor – Grand Solo Op. 14
  • Enrique Granados – Valses poéticos
  • Manuel de Falla – Homenaje ‘pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy’
  • Antonio José – Guitar Sonata
  • Encore – Isaac Albéniz – Granada (Serenata)

Here’s a lovely vid of Samrat, a couple of years ago, playing the charming Mudarra piece we heard.

After the gig, Janie and I floated a couple of doors down, to look at posh cookers. That hadn’t always been part of the plan, but that mission ended up fitting in with our plans very well indeed.

If you want to know more about Samrat, this video is a mini documentary/interview with him:

Nash Ensemble: Ravel, Falla and Martín, Wigmore Hall, 14 March 2015

This was a very relaxing Sunday evening concert.

We hadn’t been to one of these before, but it seems there is a mini tradition of the Nash Ensemble doing concerts jointly with the flamenco guitarist Juan Martín.

I vaguely recall that we had been due to see Juan Martín on a previous occasion, but the  concert had to be cancelled for some reason.

Anyway, this concert was an unusual mix of Ravel, Falla and Martín’s own guitar works.

Perhaps foolishly, I had assumed when I booked it that we’d see Juan Martín perform with the orchestra in the Ravel and Falla, but that’s not the deal with these gigs. The Nash Ensemble and the other soloist, Bernarda Fink performed the first half of the concert (the Ravel and the Falla), then Juan Martín played the second half solo.

Click here for the Wigmore Hall listing for the concert, which tells you everything else you need to know.

Lovely concert it was, lovely.

L’Invitation Au Voyage – Exploring The Music Of France And Spain, Nash Ensemble & Juan Martín, Wigmore Hall, 6 March 2010

I think this might have been the first time we saw Juan Martín team up with The Nash Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall; something they do irregularly but resolutely.

Not all the sort of music we normally seek out – Janie prefers earlier stuff, but she is partial to a bit of flamenco guitar and Juan Martín sure provides that.

I am especially partial to a bit of De Falla and there was plenty of that on show.

This is a few months ahead of the Wigmore Hall’s on-line archive resource starting, but I have found an on-line review – Jim Pritchard for musicweb-international.com – click here- that sums up the concert very well.

Goodness knows what we ate afterwards. My guess – shawarmas.

Tom Kerstens, Wigmore Hall, 27 May 2007

We were supposed to see someone else.  Was it Paco Pena?  Juan Martin? Yet another well-known guitarist?

Anyway, we weren’t supposed to see Tom Kerstens.

Had we known his relative quality, we’d have accepted the offer of our money back rather than persevered with a Sunday evening concert substitute.  But we thought, heck, give the fellow a try.  Oh dear.

Still, we’d had a corker of a month in the theatre and music department until this point.  Here’s the programme (yes, really) – let’s draw a veil.

Tom Kerstens