Leeds Castle 1981- a piece of guitar history

Some very familiar faces, and some no longer with us.
A scary but great competition!
Thanks to Oren Myers for bringing this to my attention.

There were some notable events from this competition –  Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, the first prize winner had a tragic accident with the little finger of his left hand; Paul Galbraith, who won second prize was only 17 years old at the time, and there was an incident involving a prize sherry goblet and Eliot Fisk!

Here is a quote from Graham Wade’s second volume on Segovia:

“After the playing of three movements from the set repertoire and a movement from Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, the finalists were Eliot Fisk, Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, Cheryl Grice, Paul Galbraith, Stefano Grondona, and Yoshinobu Iwanaga. The competitors then went into the performance of a concerto and when this was completed the unanimous choice for winner was Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, with the youngest competitor, Paul Galbraith, second, and Stefano Grondona, third.

All finalists were given a silver sherry goblet, though it was at first reported that Eliot Fisk, disappointed with the result, threw his goblet into the moat at Leeds Castle. This story was eventually clarified in an editorial in Guitar where it was reported that the goblet had been thrown from a taxi and later retrieved by the driver, who was allowed to keep the article.”

Segovia and Flamenco

Segovia on Flamenco Guitar, Song and Dance – from Guitar Review, 1977

Segovia’s stated credo was that he, like the Blues Brothers, was on a mission from God — well, maybe not God, but a sort of holy mission — to rescue the guitar from the taverns and the associated lowlife folks in whose hands it was then found. Obviously, he could have problems with flamenco.
Well, not quite, as it turns out.

Flamencos and Segovia

Manolo Cano, Andrés Segovia, Sabicas and Rafael Gómez Montero at the CONCURSO NACIONAL DE CANTE JONDO GRANADA 1922

Thanks to Brook Zern of the Flamenco Experience for this fascinating article.

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Karl Scheit

A name to conjure with, Karl Scheit was born in 1909 in Schönbrunn (Schlesien), Austria and died in 1993.
He was the guitar editor for Universal Edition, one of the largest and most prestigious publishers of guitar music in the mid 20th century, with publications in English, French, German and Italian. There is now a new and refurbished “Karl Scheit guitar edition”. Most guitarists I know have at some point or other used his editions, which include the Quatre Pièces Brèves by Frank Martin and Richard Rodney Bennet’s Impromptus.
Scheit

 

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