Description
The Quarteto de Guitarras de Lisboa (QGLx) was founded in 2006. During its first three years of activity, it performed approximately fifty guitar recitals in different venues in Portugal and Spain, while also premiering several original pieces written by contemporary Portuguese composers.
In mid-2009, the group suspended its activities in order to allow its members the pursuit of diverse individual projects. During the hiatus, all the elements of QGLx have developed their concert career, leading them to play in important venues and festivals throughout the world, playing with orchestras as well as with different musical formations, and also as solo artists. The will to share the experiences each one of them had lived led to a reunion of QGLx and to resuming rehearsals in late 2011 and concerts in early 2012.
Since then, a new repertoire consisting of original pieces by Portuguese composers has been developed. Parallel to this renewal, the quartet has kept a busy concert agenda with a repertoire based on internationally renowned guitar composers.
In July 2013, the quartet has decided to release a CD and a book to illustrate their work in recent years.
Faced with the immense offer of quality material available in classical music, the QGLx has always sought to achieve a unique and original experience when designing their program, aiming to combine both quality and singularity.
This was, again, their main aim in designing a program entirely based on Portuguese composers and written for or by this formation. Moreover, all the pieces have been composed in the XXIth century, thus giving the program a fiercely contemporary stance. This was made possible by the participation of composers that are themselves members of the QGLx (André Santos and José Dias) and others from the contemporary composition scene in Portugal (Carlos Marecos, Manuel Durão, Cláudio Cruz, Francisco Tavares), whom we thank for sharing their work and their musical scores with us, on this book.
So this book is the genesis of our CD, and this scores the basis to our work.
All scores edited by its composers.
June, 2014
