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The first movement of this three-movement work is embedded and will play automatically in the background. All movements may be accessed at the following links:
Download Autumn Concerto, Moderato (mp3, 2.5 MB)
Download Autumn Concerto, Adagio (mp3, 5.1 MB)
Download Autumn Concerto, Allegro (mp3, 3.5 MB)
This short concerto for guitar and string quartet (or string ensemble) was composed after a rainy day. All the music was written first as a piano score. Afterwards I added the guitar because I liked its sorrowful, romantic sound, especially in the "Adagio." Performers can convey a different mood and feeling in all movements, keeping in mind that the concerto was conceived in a rather cloudy, wet, sad atmosphere—although I was happy for there to be rain in the garden.
I finished the three movements after a week, because all the melodies were coming very quickly to my mind. Initially the audience may think the movements have nothing in common. In a manner of speaking, this is true, but in every movement melodies or certain ideas recur. The first movement is simple: the string part is written in a very tight manner and the strings repeat the guitar's melodic material very often. The "Adagio" was originally written as the first movement, but then I changed it to the second. It has a strong late renaissance character, while the third makes use of a baroque fugal style.
This version of the Autumn Concerto was arranged and orchestrated by Mr. Sakis Negrin (Greece).
The calligraphic ornament above is based on a fourteenth-century design detail appearing in Plate No. 11 of W. R. Tymms, The Art of Illuminating as Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times ... (London: Day and Son, 1860.) The roundel frames and mythic image in the montage above were derived from fifteenth- (or early sixteenth-) century illuminated manuscripts depicting the "Vision of Isaiah" and the god Aeolus. They are attributed to Girolamo Da Cremona and Liberale Da Verona, and the source manuscripts are now housed in the Libreria Piccolomini, Duomo, Siena.
