Johann Kaspar Mertz is an Austrian composer and guitarist, born in Pressburg (today Bratislava) in 1806. In 1840, he came to live in Vienna, where he stayed until his death in 1856. The pieces composed by Mertz for the guitar are among the best examples of Romantic music written for this instrument. His wife, Josephine Plantin, was a renowned concert pianist, and Mertz was deeply influenced by the music of Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann that he could hear everyday at home.

In his compositions, Mertz makes a significant evolution in the guitar technique, in order to render the effects required by the Romantic style. These features are especially recognizable in the Bardenklänge (literally Bardic sounds), a suite of 25 pieces inspired by the poems of Ossian (written, in reality, in the eighteenth century by the Scottish poet James Macpherson), which were famous throughout Europe at this time. These poems are melancholic songs evoking the atmosphere of dark and mysterious legends.

This recording includes a selection of 7 pieces from the Bardenklänge. The first, An Malvina is an example of a song dedicated to a person (a beloved woman? An unknown beauty?), which was a common form of composition at that time. Characteristic of the style of Mertz and of its filiation with Mendelssohn, this piece is built in the form of a fluid and light melody supported by rapid arpeggios with elaborate harmony. Unruhe is, as in Schumann music, a piece illustrating feverish and tormented feelings which come to peace with the last chord only. On the contrary, listening to the Abendlied invites to enjoy the calm of the evening, as a lullaby that would evoke the musical universe of Franz Schubert. In the Kindermärchen (direct echoes to Schumann's Kinderszenen), we can hear again, mainly in its central part, a soft “carpet” of arpeggios above which a simple and dreamy melody is floating, while sometimes interrupted by dazzling rising and falling chromatic scales, and which can be viewed as the musical accompaniment of an enchanting dream. After a vigorous and cheerful Scherzo, we encounter the musical spirit of Mendelssohn again in the Lied ohne Worte whose title is identical to one of this composer's masterpieces. Finally, the Tarantelle sounds like a happy intrusion of Italian light in the foggy world of the North, a way to remember the importance of the Italian musical influence in Vienna in the nineteenth century.

On the two last tracks of this record, we can also hear two pieces for piano and guitar, the Barcarolle and the Mazurka, written by Mertz, probably together with his wife. Both instruments were widely present in the Viennese salons of the Biedermeier period, and one can easily imagine that these Mertz duets took there a good place.

Vienna, the waltzes and the piano: these three elements form the unifying thread between the Mertz's music and the Valses poeticos written by Enrique Granados in 1895. Surprisingly, Granados never wrote for the guitar, and these Valses poeticos were originally written for the piano. However, these pieces are full of the colors of Spain, where the guitar plays an important role, and they have quickly given rise to several transcriptions that the composer would not have disowned. It is striking to see how these Valsesfall naturally under the fingers of guitarists, as if Granados, in restoring all the soul of Spain, had been able at the same time to recover the fine gestures of the musicians.

In the end, these Valses seem to have first traveled from Vienna to Paris (where they gain some influence from Chopin shortly before Granados himself arrived from Barcelona to meet Fauré, Debussy and Ravel), before reaching Spain. However, far from the crinolines of the Hofburg, these miniatures rather evoke a last dance in the warmth of the Spanish night, enveloped by the scent of the orange trees.