Regondi & Mertz: Guitar Music
Naxos · 8.555285 · 2005
Both Mertz and Regondi carried on the composer-performer tradition of Sor and Giuliani a generation before. Both found inspiration in the piano music of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and adapted elements of their music into their own creative processes. Although Regondi composed dozens of works for concertina, his extant original guitar writings number just fifteen, all firmly within the Romantic genre. Johann Kaspar Mertz established himself as a composer-performer in Vienna around 1840, forging a new repertoire which differed significantly from the classical and bel canto styles of his predecessors. Bardenklänge (literally ‘Bardic Sounds’), is an immense work containing nearly thirty pieces of wide variety.