KONRAD RAGOSSNIG

For four days in October 1969, Supraphon’s legendary Domovina Studio became the home for Konrad Ragossnig, who was 37 years old at the time. The guitarist was in top form, having studied in Spain under the “king of the classical guitar” Andrés Segovia. After more than half a century, Supraphon is releasing the album Konrad Ragossnig – Spanish Guitar Recital on 28 March 2025 for the first time on CD and also in digital formats.

A winner of the ORTF competition in Paris, he taught guitar at the Musik-Akademie in Basel and at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. He was playing solo concerts and appearing with orchestras around Europe, the USA, and the Far East. Besides playing the classical guitar, he also became a master of the Renaissance lute at a time when interest in the authentic interpretation of early music was just awakening in western Europe.

For his Supraphon recording, Ragossnig returned to the cornerstones of Spanish and South American guitar music. Some of the pieces were written directly for his instrument, while others (Albéniz, Granados) were originally for piano, but it was their guitar transcriptions that made them truly famous. In the lovely acoustic of the Domovina Studio in Prague, the recording team succeeded at capturing all of superb qualities of Ragossnig’s artistry: beauty of tone, flawless technical brilliance, subtleties of rhythm, dynamics, and articulation, which make his playing (and this recording) special even after so many years.