The ‘grande dame of the guitar’ remembered through a new recording of her own music.

María Luisa Anido (1907-1996) was born in Argentina and grew up in a household where the guitar was central. Her father brought home many of the great performers, whom she heard and who heard her. Miguel Llobet, himself a student of Tárrega, became one of her early teachers, though the most important was Domingo Prat. She met Andrés Segovia after one of his concerts when she was about 10 and he was in his early 20s, and her own recordings rival those of Segovia’s for both technical finesse and a natural feeling for the colours and rhythms of the Spanish guitar tradition.

Cinzia Milani remarks, in an introduction to her new recording of Anido’s own compositions, that ‘there are moments when the technical essence of Anido's handing of the fretboard, especially in the higher registers, is so particular that one has the impression of knowing exactly what her hands were like.’ Milani concludes her album with Anido’s first and perhaps best-known piece, the Barcarola which she composed at the age of 20. Llobet lavished well-earned praise on her in response: ‘I have read and played your Barcarola; the voices are carried magnificently with admirable taste of their natural characteristics; the tone colours are perfect. Bravo, very well done.’

This is only the second album ever dedicated to Anido’s music, making Cinzia Milani’s recording a landmark contribution to guitar music on record, and to the extensive guitar library on Brilliant Classics. The most substantial collection here is a sequence of nine Impresiones Argentinas, which effectively form a survey of the folk music of her native land. Individual movements take up Indian, mestizo, pampan and North-western Creole melodies and rhythms.

The Impresiones Argentinas are marvellously relaxed and earthy pieces, speaking unaffectedly of everyday experience, and no wonder that Anido charmed Soviet audiences with them during her 1960s tours, before settling for a while in Cuba. The Aire Norteño and Cancion del Yucatan equally draw on south-American roots, while a trio of Preludios nostalgicos belong to the repertoire of many modern guitarists. Anido was a major figure on the landscape of the 20th-century guitar, and Cinzia Milani has made a devoted tribute to her art.