NOVA Guitar Duo
Nelly von Alven (six-string guitar) and Luiz Mantovani (eight-string guitar)
All arrangements by Luiz Mantovani
Audio engineer: Uli Holst
Liner notes: Luiz Mantovani
Photos: Pedro Oliveira
Artwork: Andrea Barzen
Guitars: Nicolaus Wollf 2011 (six-string) and Samuel Carvalho 2012 (eight-string)
Recorded at Hamburger Konservatorium, Hamburg, Germany between 3 and 5 January 2021.
In Journey, our second album, we have turned our attention to the Eastern European sounds of Bartók and Janáček and beyond with a new piece written especially for us by Israeli composer Lior Navok. The programme is somewhat less exuberant than our fiery and extroverted first album, Sortilegios, from 2019. This time, we invite the listener on a contemplative journey, reconnecting with deep emotions, ancestral memories and far-away landscapes. While it looks inward from an emotional point of view, Journey also broadens the expressive limits of our ensemble, showcasing a repertoire that may already be familiar to music lovers but is presented here for the first time in guitar duo arrangements.
This CD sounds like an orchestra of silk threads: more than modern, more than oriental, even more than kaleidoscopic! The NOVA Guitar Duo offers a timbral mixture of splendour and mystery that is truly exciting.
Radio Svizzera Classica
