The Gaulitanus Choir´s 2017-18 artistic season came to an end on Friday 13th July with A Guitar Recital featuring acclaimed Italian guitarist Fabio Barbagallo. The recital was held at the gorgeous medieval St Cecilia Chapel, Ghajnsielem, generously made available by Wirt Ghawdex.

Organized in collaboration with the Associazione Amici della Musica and the Solarino International Guitar Festival and artistically directed by Gaulitanus Choir founder-director Colin Attard, the recital attracted a much larger audience than expected, with people cramming the space available and spilling over to outside the chapel. The audience thoroughly enjoyed the recital and its highly varied repertoire, notwithstanding the very humid and hot temperature, which also made it very taxing for the performer.

The concert started off with a few short excerpts by renaissance composer Pietro Paulo Borrono da Milano. Composed, loosely, when the chapel itself was built, these provided a certain unique aura.  A suite by baroque Czech master John Anton Logy was similarly very fitting.  Two works, originally composed for guitar, by romantic violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini provided a good contrast, as did the songs by contemporary French composer-guitarist Thierry Tisserand and three popular traditional Sicilian mazurkas transcribed for guitar.  The recital ended with a crescendo with a suite by well-known Argentinian composer-guitarist Maximo Diego Pujol.