If the revival of the guitar distinctly awoke in 1920 with the beginning of Andrés Segovia’s concert career, the expansion of the repertoire for two guitars only started quite later, in the early ‘60s, when the great French guitarist Ida Presti formed a duo with Alexandre Lagoya, an Egyptian-born guitarist of Greek descent: they sparked such a wave of interest that a number of composers started writing for twelve rather than six strings. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, already an inventive composer for Andrés Segovia’s guitar, wrote prolifically also for the Presti-Lagoya duo. His commitment culminated in 1962 with a work that is a milestone in the repertoire: Les guitares bien tempérées, a set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, are a reflection to his studies in Florence. The aim of the Guitar Duo Piera Dadomo e Vincenzo Torricella was to fit Castelnuovo-Tedesco into the context of other Tuscan composers. Due to the shortage of original compositions for two guitars, they had to resort to transcriptions from works by Boccherini and Puccini.
