The Birth of a Concept

Most of our greatest composers never composed expressly for the guitar, and it was the love for their music and a desire to play it that gave us the idea of transcribing orchestral works at the start of 1991.
    To find out if there were any interest in our idea, we contacted some concert promotors in Sweden. The rumour spread, and in a few week’s time we were fully booked for the very next season. Now the only problem was the pieces we had promised to play – some on request and some by our own wish – they didn’t exist...
    Well, they did exist in the form of orchestral scores, but not for two guitars. We were not even sure if they all were possible to arrange for our setting. And the truth is... some of them were not! But to start a musical career by cancelling contracted performances isn’t a very clever thing, so in order not to destroy our future as musicians we were bound to proceed.
    Looking back, it is obvious to see that Progetto Avanti never would have left the ideas stage if it hadn’t been for these bookings, but at the time all we could think of was how stupid we were by promising the unfeasible...
    The solution, of course, was to look outside the tradition and the common comprehension of guitar playing. Easy to say, not so easily done after some 10 years of training... Still, after a Spring with daily rehearsals and nightly arranging and a lot of ‘free association’ meetings often improved by quite a few beers, we really did make it. Our Swedish debut in June 1991 was a climax of performance anxiety after several months of nightmares, but it was a success. And we had learned a lesson:
    The limitations are always in the mind, never in the fingers.
    Some time after our national debut, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs asked us to represent Sweden and the Swedish theme “Light of Inspiration” at the world exhibition EXPO ’92 in Seville, Spain. And if not before, it was at this international debut, in September 1992, that we finally realised we really had something interesting to offer. In spite of the competition from an average of some 300 cultural events a day, the two main newspapers sent their leading critics and the Swedish Pavilion was so crowded people had to be turned away at the door.
    Therefore we decided to aim for an international career, but first we wanted to stay put in Sweden for a few more years to refine our concept and come together as an ensemble enough to meet international standards. We think, with this debut CD, we do meet these standards.
    But what we think at this moment isn’t very important. It is you who listen that count. And if you find yourself smiling a lot whilst listening – well, then we did it again, didn’t we?

Booklet text  1  2  3  4  5  6  (Booklet Text Index)

Back to Orchestral Illusions
Back to Orchestral Classics for Two Guitars