Léon Frijns: Dear Alfredo, could you tell us something about yourself?  

Alfredo Escande: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind when you ask me that question is to say that I am a happy man, luckily doing the things I like most:  teaching (guitar and mathematics), playing the guitar, sharing my life with whom and where I've chosen, and being in contact with many good friends around the world (wonderful people, you among them).  

L.F.: Can you tell us about your way to the guitar? Who was (were) your first teacher(s)?

A.E.:  My father gave me a guitar as a Christmas present when I was 11 years old, and   then I began to study with my first guitar teacher, Juan Carlos Risso. When I entered the University (Economics) I had too little time for practising, but suddenly I realised that I liked music and the guitar too much, so I decided to go on studying it. In that moment Professor Risso advised me to study with Maestro Abel Carlevaro. I admired him so much through his recordings and concerts, that my first thought was that it would be impossible to be accepted by him as a student. "Phone to him" Risso told me, "he will open a new guitar world to you". So wise words! I will be thankful to him for the rest of my life.  

L.F.: When did you meet Maestro Abel Carlevaro for the first time? Did you know about his school?

A.E.: It was in 1974, in the same year in which he began to go to Europe again, after his first european journey for about three years in the late forties. I didn't know about his school, I only knew that his way of playing was unique, so different from the rest of guitar players, and which I liked as the best one.  

L.F.: Tell us about your first lessons with him, and your experiences with his school.

A.E.: You can imagine how nervous I was when I took my first lesson with him! But surely you would never imagine what I am going to tell you now. I went there, ignoring totally what having a lesson with a great Maestro meant, and I didn't bring my guitar. "Please sit down and take this guitar…But be careful! It belonged to Segovia and I've just played a concert in Paris with it!".  It was his Hauser!! A wonderful instrument, made in 1936.

Well, he asked me to play something, and I had prepared a Gavotte by Barrios (B minor). After having played five or six bars, he stopped me very kindly: "Very well, you've got good conditions… but I will tell you how to sit down". And so Juan Carlos Risso was right: a new world was opened to me. I had never dreamt that a guitar lesson could be so logical, clear and deep in concepts. When I went back home, I bought a thick notebook and began to write down every thing he told me in his lessons. I did so for more than two years. Of course I still keep that notebook as a treasure, even when those concepts have been so deeply developed in the books.

My experiences with the school are so many, and I am so concerned with it! But I will tell you something that is for me a good resume of what it means to me. A couple of months before that first lesson, I had read an interview in which Carlevaro said -among other important things- something you have surely already heard: "Practising is not so important as thinking. Play one hour but think  ten". Amazing for me! So, when that first lesson finished, I asked him: "What did you mean in that interview by 'thinking on the guitar'?" And he answered "That is what I am going to teach you". And this is now the most important of my experiences with his school: I am now able to think on the guitar.  

L.F.: The Cuadernos 1-4 existed already. Did you already know them before you met Maestro Carlevaro? Can you tell something about them, their ideas or concepts?

A.E.: I already knew Cuadernos 1-3, and I had been practising on them for one year before going to him, but without knowing the underlying concepts. Useless! In that first lesson he not only taught me how to sit down, but also how to play a C major scale to its slightest detail (you know about this…)

That day he gave me Cuaderno Nº 4 too, because it had just been published.

As I told you, it is useless to practice on those Cuadernos without knowing the main concepts of the school. For example, Cuaderno Nº 3 is focused on the changes of position on the fingerboard. And, as you know, they are all of them made by the arm. But if you are sitting in an incorrect way, or if you don't know the concepts about how to take the instrument, it will be impossible for you to move your arm freely, and most probably the exercises will be wrongly made. A proper use of the Cuadernos need a very careful reading of "Escuela de la Guitarra" or better, to have lessons with somebody who really knows about these things.  

L.F.: In the “Escuela de la guitarra” we can read that Maestro Carlevaro dictated the book to you. What is the history of this book? Whose idea was it to write this book? When did you both start to work on it? What are your contributions to it?

A.E.:  Carlevaro has told me that in the early seventies, Alberto Ginastera, the great argentinian composer, encouraged him to write a book exposing his ideas about the guitar, after having heard his masterclasses in Villa Gesell, Argentina. During the following years he made several attempts to write it, having asked three or four different persons to help him. But for several reasons it didn't work. Once, at the beginning of 1976, he told me about that and he even showed me four folders containing some written pages about different subjects of the future book. Different kinds of paper, different machine types, different handwriting…It was evident that several persons had tried to help him. In that moment I realised that it would be for me a wonderful opportunity for learning more about the school if I could help him in that task. And I felt that I was able to.

Some months later, in August, he came back from Europe and the first day I visited him for my weekly lesson, he asked me: "You work in a bank, don't you?" In fact, I did. "And then you know how to type quickly and well." Of course I did. "Do you have some time now? I have to talk something important with you". And, as I answered that I had time, he said: "Let's go and have a coke". And then he told me that he had realised in Europe that many students and guitar players were using his "Cuadernos" without knowing how to do it, and it was a very bad thing because the results were the opposite they should be. "It is urgent to write the book", he told me. "And I need your help, because you know how to type and you know my ideas". Don’t forget, Leon, that in those days there were no computers, and for me no electric-machine, so I typed on an old one, very heavy, which had belonged to my father.

Well, we began to work on Wednesday, 1^st September 1976. Once a week we had a two-hours session (sometimes longer), beginning at 9 PM, in which he spoke while I was writing down what he was saying. Several times we discussed about the most clear ways of explaining something, and several times I gave him the "external" point of view, that's to say, how his hand or his arm, for example, looked from my point of view, sitting in front of him.  Then I went back home and I had a whole week for putting those papers in order, cleaning up the text, and then typing it. Back next Wednesday, I read it loudly  to him, and very often new ideas came, or some corrections, and then back home to write it again! Remember: no cut-copy-paste in those days! I wrote each chapter at least five times! Writing the whole book took us more than eighteen months. The pictures were taken at the end of March 1978, I made the drawings (because the publisher had problems for getting a professional drawer) in May  and gave Barry the originals and everything in June '78. The book finally appeared in August '79.

I would like to add two things: the first one is that as I had thought, helping Carlevaro in writing this book was incredibly important for my own learning and besides, it opened many new opportunities for my job of teaching. The second one is that "Escuela de la Guitarra" was the first book in which I worked with Carlevaro. After that, I helped him in all the following books: the four "Masterclasses", and also the Dictionary and a book about his own experiences with the guitar and the music (both not yet published).  

L.F.: What are the most important values in the book “Escuela de la Guitarra”?

A.E.: I think that its value for guitarists all over the world is shown by the fact that it has been already published in six languages (Spanish, English, French, German, Chinese  and Korean, this last one being not authorized by Maestro Carlevaro) and also translated to Japanese, Czech and other languages. I don't know whether any other book about the guitar, even the most famous methods, have been so widely translated and published. Do you? But in any case, the logics and the order in which the new ideas are exposed, in addition to the huge changes respect to the most usual guitar techniques, make the book so attractive to so many guitar players around the world. Consider that there is no economic power behind it, no publicity-machine, Carlevaro has no manager, he is not a member of the "star-system", he does not record for any famous or powerful label. So, this book and Carlevaro's teachings have opened their own way only because of their value…  

L.F.: What do you regard as special or new about this school?

A.E.: The fantastic equilibrium between logics, playing (and teaching) experience, and a fine and deep conception of art and music. Besides, it is the first time in which guitar playing is thought not from the fingers action but from the whole body. Imagine that even the feet have their own role! Nobody before Carlevaro had explained how to move the fingers on the fingerboard using the arm and the wrist as the principal actors. When I was a child, I was amazed every time I heard Carlevaro's recordings, because of his clearness, and thought it was due to his extraordinary ability. Now I know that any student who has learned how to use properly his arm, can play without making any noise. But nobody had taught this before him…

And the main thing: everything is focused on the music. Cleaning and making easier the way of playing has the aim of putting the music in the first level of attention. Think on what he says in the book: simplicity is the result of an intelligently combined complex. A good technique, laying on a real theory, simplifies playing and allows the music to come out freely.  

L.F.: Do you know whether there are many players using the concepts of the school?

A.E.: Of course there are many. From many different parts of the world. And those who have really understood it, don't want to play anymore in the "old" way.  

L.F.: Could you tell us something about your work for the guitar in Uruguay? About the guitar-association? About your television program?

A.E.: I try to teach these concepts to any guitarist who would like to know about them. That is my job. And, as I told you, I like it very much. The guitar association, Centro Guitarrístico del Uruguay, was founded in 1937, and organizes concerts and other activities. Since 1994 we have a weekly TV program, in the National TV System, which is seen in the whole country. You know it, because you visited the program last year, and played in it. Many well known guitarists have been there, playing in the TV studio: Abel Carlevaro, his brother Agustin, Pierri, Fernández, Baranzano, Barbosa Lima, Eduardo Isaac, Alessio Monti, Cacho Tirao, Jorge Oraison, José Miguel Moreno, Patrick Zeoli, Richard Stover, and many others. And also many young Uruguayan players have their opportunity to play there. Imagine that we've already made more than 300 programs! Once a week, half an hour of good guitar, during more than six years…  

L.F.: Can you tell us something about Uruguay and the guitar? Who are the important players?

A.E.: There is a very long history of the guitar in Uruguay: it has always been the most popular instrument  since the time of the Spanish colony. And afterwards it began to develop when very good guitarists came here: Manjón, Calleja, García Tolsa, the great Barrios, Segovia, who lived nine years in Montevideo. And besides Carlevaro, there are many well known names in Uruguayan guitar: Oscar Cáceres, Betho Davezac, Antonio Pereira Arias, Baltazar Benítez, the most famous Pierri and Fernández, José Fernández Bardesio, Jorge Oraison, Eduardo Baranzano, César Amaro, Juan Carlos Amestoy, I cannot tell you all of them…  

L.F.: One last question I would like to ask you. What are your future plans in regard to the guitar and the guitar school of  Maestro Carlevaro?

A.E.: You know how much I like teaching and principally the things I've learned from Maestro Carlevaro. These are always my plans: trying to teach anybody who is interested in these subjects, here in Montevideo or in any part of the world where I would be invited to go. And, from time to time, giving some concert so as not to lose the practice.  

L.F.: Alfredo, thank you very much for your inspiring words. I’m already looking forward to the concert of  Maestro Abel Carlevaro in Diekirch. I wish you all the best and hope that the members of our guitar club Cithara  will meet you one time in Luxemburg!