Javier Contreras: Works For Two Guitars

This album showcases recent works for two guitars by the Chilean composer and guitarist Javier Contreras. He is joined by fellow Chilean guitarist and pedagogue, José Antonio Escobar – a decisive figure in Contreras’s musical development – to explore the composer’s inventive harmonic and cosmopolitan influences, which range from South American folk music to jazz. The Sonata for Two Guitars evokes the uniquely versatile sirilla dance in a work that marries introspection with vitality and virtuoso flourish. Elsewhere, Patagonian folkloric elements, exotic dances, high-speed dialogues and exquisite colours are conjured up in music of subtlety and energy.