Mēla Guitar Quartet - Overtures & Dances (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Overtures & Dances matured as a concept through years of touring and performing. Naturally, as we explored repertoire, we found pieces that resonated with audiences and had a special affinity with the quartet. These pieces tended to be ones that had a theatrical element in opera, ballet, or dance.

The possibilities of arrangement enabled by guitar quartet add another dimension, either using the spectrum of timbral colours of the guitar like “an orchestra in miniature” (as the great Andrés Segovia used to say), or to expand the music of one piano between four guitarists to make a rich, sustaining sonority, unobtainable with fewer guitars. We believe this collection of pieces pushes the boundaries of how guitar quartet can be used, but always in a way that best serves the storytelling, lyrical beauty, and often childlike wonder of these works.

TRACKLIST

1. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmila: Overture
2. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Debussy: Deux arabesques, L. 66: No. 1, Andantino con moto
3. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Debussy: Deux arabesques, L. 66: No. 2, Allegretto scherzando
4. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Saint-Saëns: Samson et Delilah, Op. 47: Act III: Bachhanale
5. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Ravel: Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60: I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant. Lent
6. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Ravel: Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60: II. Petit Poucet. Très modéré
7. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Ravel: Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60: III. Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes. Mouvement de marche
8. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Ravel: Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60: IV. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête. Mouvement de valse modéré
9. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Ravel: Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60: V. Le jardin féerique. Lent et grave
10. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Rachmaninoff: Polka italienne, TN ii/21
11. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Holst: A Fugal Overture, Op. 40, No. 1
12. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Elgar: 3 Characteristic Pieces, Op. 10: No. 3, Contrasts: The Gavotte - A.D. 1700 and 1900
13. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel: Overture
14. Mēla Guitar Quartet - Hisaishi: My Neighbor Totoro Suite



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