Baden Powell de Aquino: Songbook for Guitar

In this splendid CD, Andrea Monarda carefully and personally resolves the complex interpretative issues relating to Baden Powell’s work, on the one hand remaining faithful to the original, but at the same time personalising it, relating it to both transcriptions and recordings. The result is a highly enjoyable album that restores to us one of the monuments of the 20th century guitar repertoire in a new and convincing form.

The choice of repertoire covers little more than a decade: it ranges from pieces recorded in 1960 for his second album (Insonia, Prelúdio ao coração) to pieces released in ‘72/’74. There are afro-sambas and sambas such as Consolação, Só por amor, Deve ser amor (to which Vinicius de Moraes later added lyrics), choros and valsas such as the beautiful Retrato brasileiro and Valsa sem nome, freer compositions where his unmistakable style emerges (Petite valse, Acalanto das nonas), and a homage to Baden Powell’s interpretation of a Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Maria classic, Manhã de carnaval. For other tracks on the disc (Valsa sem nome [mentioned above as well], Berceuse à Jussara) Vinicius has also written ‘poems for music’ overflowing with love, passion and suffering, which capture the essence of Baden Powell’s music, which also reaches us through the channels of the deepest emotions and feelings that the sounds convey to us, emotions and feelings that this album succeeds in fully restoring.

From the liner notes by Giovanni Guaccero