Concerto for Portuguese guitar and orchestra by Pedro H. da Silva

Track listing on “transclassical concertos” album
With Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

4. I. Dusk 9:51
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5. II. Night 7:51
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6. III. Dawn 7:14
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For the first time in history, a concerto for Portuguese guitar has been composed and recorded. With the composer, Pedro H. da Silva, performing as soloist, the work opens restlessly with a kind of exhortation to the setting Sun, which alternates with a melancholy acceptance of the coming darkness. Its style is the most Portuguese of the three movements. The second movement opens in Raga Mangal Bhairav with the Portuguese guitar imitating a Bansuri, an Indian flute, with a guitar slide and an EBow—an electronic bow normally used on electric guitar. The music accepts and embraces the night, relishing in the full moon and twinkling starlight. The last movement comes out of the darkness into the brightness of dawn, replete with bird calls, and finally to an exuberant and intricate Bulgarian dance rhythm in a cycle of 25 beats that culminates in the use of an Engle—a kind of guitar hammer.