World Class at the 2024 Pittaluga

Competitions

30 September 2024

Great enthusiasm for talented young guitar players from around the world

September 2024 saw the 56th edition of the Michele Pittaluga international Guitar Competition along with its smaller sister competition, the Guitar Composition Competition, in Alessandria, Italy. It was dedicated to the famous south American guitar virtuoso Augustín Barrios Mangoré on the 80th anniversary of his death.

Under the artistic direction of Marco Tamayo, 20 guitarists travelled to the northern italian town, while 31 composers applied in the Composition category.

First prize was won by Andrzej Grygier (26) from Poznan, followed by Igor Klokov and Ausias Parejo.

The 2024 competition was fully livestreamed, included several local performances of competitors, and offered a great number of special prizes, such as awards by D´Addario and Alvarez.

While guitar competitions are often dominated by standard repertoire such as “Concierto de Aranjuez”, this year´s edition featured a completely different repertoire in the finals: together with the Quartetto di Torino, finalists were required to perform either the Quintet op. 143 of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, or the Gran Quintetto op. 65 of Mauro Giuliani. All finalists chose the Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed his Guitar Quintet in less than a month early in 1950, in response to a request for a chamber work for Andres Segovia to play for the Music Guild of Los Angeles. Segovia premiered the work here a year later with the Paganini Quartet. “It is a melodious and serene work, partly neo-classic and partly neo-romantic (like most of my works),” the composer wrote. “I would say, it is written almost in a Schubertian vein – Schubert has always been one of my favorite composers.

The theme of the competition for composers was “Mille regretz” by Josquin Desprez (1450-1521), one of the most famous songs of the sixteenth century in Europe, that was transcribed in countless versions also for plucked instruments. For the competition, a quote of the song was required to be included in a new work with a duration of approx. 10 minutes.

Unlike the main competition, the composition competition did not set an age limit.

First Prize winner Andrzej Marcin Grygier was born in Leszno in 1998. He started playing the guitar at the age of 7 when he became a student of Roman Maciejewski Music School in Leszno. He graduated from Jadwiga Kaliszewska Comprehensive Music School of secondary level in Poznan (‘Talent School’).

For many years he had been working with Mr Maciej Konczak, his teacher and a tutor from 2007. Since 2017 he has been a student of the Academy of Music in Poznan . Currently he is in Prof. Łukasz Kropaczewski’s class. He has given concerts in countries including Poland, Russia, Slovakia, France, Belgium, Italy, Croatia.