Simeon Flick––the 50-something moonlighter who turned heads with his 2020 classical guitar debut, Scarlatti’s Greatest Hits––is back. This time, though, in lieu of a gaudy prom tux, he is decked out in matador gear.

Since the guitar evolved from predominantly Spanish/Moorish and Italian parlor curios, and with so many of its key luthiers (the Almeria-born Antonio de Torres Jurado [1817 – 1892] standardized the guitar’s shape and construction to the six-stringed pan-genre acoustic form we know now), guitarists, composers, and guitarist/composers having been Spanish, the country and the instrument have become inextricably intertwined. Therefore, the Spanish guitar IS the classical guitar, and ergo Indigenous: The Spanish Guitar, the title of Simeon Flick’s tenth solo album, and the second to showcase his just-off-the-beaten-path repertoire combinations and interpretive talents on this challenging instrument.

No discussion of the classical guitar’s repertoire––and especially the 12-track cross-section featured herein––would be comprehensive without substantially more than a passing mention of pioneering Linares-born guitarist Andrés Segovia (1893 – 1987), who brought the classical guitar to the world, and whose curating presence imbues these selections with that ambitious purpose. All of the herein featured works were specifically written for the guitar or one of its predecessors, and all but two were “dedicated” to this prodigious progenitor of what we now recognize as the modern classical guitar virtuoso, though it was a dubious point of pride that Segovia never paid for what were essentially commissioned pieces from these composers, who were subtly coerced into donating them without any guarantee that they would ever be performed or recorded by him. They were also usually fingered––often in an awkward, anachronistic manner (oh, the rubato!)––and edited by the Maestro, who essentially became a co-composer by dint of having to act as translator for his collaborators, most of whom were haplessly unfamiliar with the guitar’s quirky capabilities and limitations. And the 2 pre-20th century compositions on this album that weren’t dedications were brought to prominence by Segovia, who had to track them down through tireless research efforts on his instrument’s behalf.

Despite Segovia’s heavy hand, the composers with whom he collaborated generated some fantastic music for the guitar’s nascent repertoire, not to mention a much needed break from having to transcribe yet another work from another instrument’s canon to add to it. Federico Moreno Torroba’s (1891 - 1982) Sonatina is more than a fine example, a brilliant representation of all that is possible without excessive taxation of the seasoned player’s abilities. The Sonatina is at once “serious” music (a big deal for an instrument by which such genius is often met with a raised eyebrow), containing compelling compositional elements and intriguing modulations that never keep the heartrending melodic themes from taking flight. The fact that Moreno Torroba also managed to include nationalistic devices like traditional folk melody quotes, Phrygian cadences, and rasgueado flourishes without compromising the suite’s universality––or triggering Segovia, who was trying to “rescue” the guitar from flamenco––is an added bonus.

Indigenous begins with a type of piece that was common from the 16th century onward: a set of variations on an ostinato theme entitled Guardame Las Vacas by Granadan vihuela virtuoso Luis de Narváez (1526 – 1549), which are among the first known examples of their kind, and was a staple of Segovia’s concert programs and studio recordings. Unlike Segovia, Flick has performed the third variation fourth in order, where it sits more naturally, but has ended the minor-keyed piece as Segovia often did, with a Picardy third A major chord––a common musical device of the composition’s era––instead of the indicated octave.

That chord segues seamlessly into the aforementioned Sonatina, which then gives way to the perennial favorite Etude in B Minor by the “Beethoven of the guitar”, Fernando Sor (1778 – 1839). Though best known for his Variations on a Theme from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Sor also performed an invaluable service for the guitar’s pedagogy, composing exercises and studies that still manage to be quite melodic despite the imposed technical and textural limitations. This study for the right hand is a beautiful representation of that balanced approach, and Flick has again emulated Segovia in his D. C. al coda repeat of the piece’s second half in order to add more heft to its performing chassis (otherwise, it would clock in at barely over a minute long).

The rest of Indigenous features music of the 20th century. Manuel De Falla’s (1876 – 1946) Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy is at once modern and quintessentially Spanish, utilizing the aforementioned Phrygian and rhythmic flamenco devices alloyed with subtly complex harmony and modulation to create an emphatically impressionistic result. Impressionism also pervades Federico Mompou’s (1893 – 1987) Suite Compostelana, six separate pieces united in their embracing of upper harmony chords and more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts minimalism in their evoking of a beautifully nuanced, almost melancholic repose. The sixth and final section, Muñeira, feels like an uptempo anomaly borrowed from another composer, but provides an ideally jubilant endpoint for Indigenous.

For better or worse, the listener won’t find any Turina, Granados, Rodrigo, or the ubiquitous Albéniz here, and though much of this album’s repertoire has already appeared on records by more adept soloists, the listener will be hard-pressed to find this ilk of decades-long sensitivity to the material and its interpretation, much less in this kind of era-spanning variety and aural amiability. Indigenous leads listeners straight to the source and guides them on a grand tour of Spanish culture as refracted through Flick’s aesthetically enriching prism.