Up close and orange. Jordanian-Canadian guitarist Tariq Harb plays Serenata Española by Spanish composer/pianist Joaquín Malats (1872–1912). Harb mentions on his YouTube: “It is originally written for piano and this is an arrangement I did of it for guitar. It sounds great on guitar as it has many musical gestures and passages that are idiomatic and fit the instrument so well. Also, experimenting with camera angles/close ups of the hands was plenty of fun! I want to thank Ioana Voicu for her cool work on that, especially the plucking-hand close ups – really cool! I hope you enjoy this performance!”
As Naxos explains: “One of the first to perform Albeniz’s Iberia was the formidable Barcelona pianist Joaquim Malats (1872–1912). “I am writing Iberia … essentially because of you and for you”, Albéniz wrote in a letter dated 1907. An admired virtuoso in Europe and the United States, Malats composed a lot of salon music, of which the Serenata Española is the most popular.”
