Guitarist.com – Blog

This looks like fun. It’s the Barrios Worldwide Web Competition. Upload your performance of Barrios pieces to YouTube and you could win a round-trip to Paraguay to perform in the finals. 1st-Place prize is $5,000. (All travel expenses to be paid by the Competition.) Eduardo Fernandez, Berta Rojas, and Carlos Barbosa-Lima are involved, so that’s a very good sign. Details at http://www.barriosworldwide.com

Here’s my new favorite guitarist, Berta Rojas, playing Un Sueno en la Floresta (A Dream in the Forest):

If there’s a more beautiful classical guitar video on YouTube, I haven’t seen it. The music is Julia Florida by Agustín Barrios. The guitarist is Berta Rojas. She is from Paraguay. So was Barrios (1885-1944). And so are the people in this video.

According to Tony Morris of GuitarAlive.org, a long-lost recording of Barrios has been found. It’s a recording of Barrios himself playing Bicho Feo.

Says Tony:

The original 78 recording by Barrios himself has been found independently by 2 different sources, both within a period of two months. Bicho Feo, or “Ugly Bug” is a humorous tango that Barrios used to play at the end of his concerts to bring the house down. The manuscript of the score has never been found, but Barrios recorded it on the Atlanta label in Argentina, and two copies have been found! Huge news for the classical guitar world.

There are lots of references to Bicho Feo in Six Silver Moonbeams: The Life and Times of Agustin Barrios Mangore