Pedro Vittone, 1936

This is the guitar Abel Carlevaro learned on, played on, and recorded on. It was built in 1936 by the man who taught him his first notes.

Very few instruments can be tied this directly to a figure of Carlevaro's stature. This 1936 guitar was made in Montevideo by Pedro Vittone, the guitarist and luthier who took on a seven year old Abel Carlevaro as a pupil, and it became one of the young virtuoso's first serious instruments. Carlevaro kept it for years, and in 1958 he chose it to record Manuel Ponce's Variaciones sobre 'Folías de España' y Fuga for his first LP, Recital de Guitarra. You can hear that recording here: this exact guitar in the hands of the man who rewrote how the classical guitar is taught.

The guitar is documented in Orfeo Magazine No. 23 (Spring 2024), the issue devoted to the guitar in the Río de la Plata, where it is photographed and captioned as the Vittone with which Carlevaro recorded the Ponce. The label inside reads Pedro Vittone, Montevideo, Uruguay, with the year 1936 written by hand.

How it reached Austin is a story in itself. In October 2023 the Concurso Internacional de Guitarra Abel Carlevaro in Montevideo, organized by the city's Escuela de Música Vicente Ascone, offered this very guitar, together with its Mark Leaf case, as the first prize, with the final held at the Sala Verdi on October 30. It was won by Natan Bastos, a young Brazilian guitarist who now studies at the University of Texas at Austin with Adam Holzman, in a final judged by a jury that included Eduardo Fernández, himself one of Carlevaro's most celebrated disciples. Natan is a friend of the shop, and we are honored that he has trusted us with the next chapter of this instrument.

For anyone who has spent time with the Carlevaro school, with Uruguayan guitar history, or simply with the recordings, this is a rare chance to own a piece of it.

---

Listen & Read

Hear this guitar: Abel Carlevaro plays Ponce, Variaciones sobre 'Folías de España' y Fuga (1958), recorded on this instrument.

The full album: Abel Carlevaro, Recital de Guitarra, LP (1958).

Read the history: Orfeo Magazine No. 23, The guitar in the Río de la Plata. The Uruguayan section, including Alfredo Escande's "The golden age of the Uruguayan guitar" and Guzmán Trinidad's "The first Uruguayan guitars," runs from page 26, with this guitar pictured on page 31.

The competition: Concurso Internacional de Guitarra Abel Carlevaro, Intendencia de Montevideo, where this guitar and its Mark Leaf case are listed as the first prize.

---

This guitar plays beautifully, and it sounds that way too. It has that old world sound that no modern builder can quite manufacture: rich basses with real body underneath the melody, and creamy, smooth trebles that sing rather than cut. What surprises people is the projection. For an instrument of this age and size it carries far more than you expect, and it does it without ever getting hard or brittle.

It is the type of guitar that draws the listener's ear in rather than pushing sound at them. Notes bloom and hang in the air, and the overall impression is one of warmth and intimacy with a voice that still fills a room. You can hear exactly this quality on Carlevaro's 1958 recording of the Ponce Folías, and it is remarkable how much of that sound is still in the wood.

The action is set low and the guitar plays very easily. Nothing about it feels like a museum piece under the hands. It invites you to play, and it rewards you when you do.

---

This is a Montevideo guitar of the 1930s, and it looks like one. The spruce top has aged to a deep amber, and the most striking feature is the soundhole: a wide, elongated opening edged in rope purfling, with the fingerboard extending straight across the middle of it so that the sound escapes through two openings, one on either side of the neck, and the player gains extra frets in the upper register. The same rope pattern runs around the edge of the top.

That design has an obvious ancestor. Francisco Simplicio, the great Barcelona maker and heir to Enrique García, built a small number of guitars in his final years with a double soundhole flanking the fingerboard, and they remain among the rarest and most sought after instruments of the Spanish tradition. Vittone very likely had one of those late Simplicios pass through his Montevideo shop and decided to build his own interpretation of it. Spanish guitarists and their instruments were passing through the Río de la Plata constantly in these years, and a guitarist-luthier of Vittone's curiosity would have studied one closely. The result is a guitar that stands almost alone: a Uruguayan take on one of the most distinctive designs in the history of the classical guitar.

The slotted headstock carries a carved crest and a fine inlaid center strip, and the back is joined in two pieces with a contrasting center seam. The bridge is a simple rectangular design with a bone saddle, very much in the Spanish manner that the Río de la Plata makers inherited from the instruments arriving from Spain.

Inside, the original paper label is intact and clearly legible: Pedro Vittone, Montevideo, Uruguay, C.E.S., with año 1936 handwritten in ink.

The guitar comes with the Mark Leaf case it was awarded with at the Carlevaro competition, a fitted, plush lined case handmade in Virginia and a fine home for an instrument of this importance.

---

Specifications

Origin: Montevideo, Uruguay

Provenance: Ex. Abel Carlevaro. Awarded as first prize at the Concurso Internacional de Guitarra Abel Carlevaro, Montevideo, October 2023

Label: Pedro Vittone, Montevideo, Uruguay, C.E.S., año 1936

Recording: Manuel Ponce, Variaciones sobre 'Folías de España' y Fuga, Abel Carlevaro, Recital de Guitarra (1958)

Documentation: Orfeo Magazine No. 23, Spring 2024

Case: Mark Leaf, included

Condition: Very good structurally, with several old, cleated crack repairs to the top and back and age appropriate wear

---

Pedro Vittone (1871 to 1940) is one of the three luthiers Orfeo Magazine chose to represent twentieth century Uruguayan guitar making, alongside Antonio Pereira Velazco and Juan Carlos Santurión. He was, in Orfeo's words, "an accomplished guitarist and an excellent guitar maker." He also taught, following the school of Dionisio Aguado, and his most important pupils were Abel Carlevaro, who began with him at the age of seven, and Abel's brother Agustín.

Vittone was a musician first and a builder second, and his guitars are extremely scarce. We have been told he built only a handful of instruments in his life, which makes a surviving, documented example with this provenance rarer still.

---

Uruguay produced one of the great flowerings of the classical guitar in the twentieth century, and Montevideo in the 1930s was where it took root. The Río de la Plata had been drawing Spanish guitarists since the late 1800s, among them Gaspar Sagreras, Carlos García Tolsa and Antonio Jiménez Manjón. Agustín Barrios was a frequent visitor from 1912. Then came the heirs of Tárrega: Josefina Robledo, Miguel Llobet, Emilio Pujol, and above all Andrés Segovia, who first played Montevideo in 1920 and returned in 1921, 1928 and 1937.

1936, the year this guitar was built, is the year Abel Carlevaro officially began his public career, in concert halls and on the radio in Montevideo. Soon after, Segovia, newly married to the Spanish pianist Paquita Madriguera, settled in the city for roughly a decade, and in 1937 Carlevaro became his student. Segovia's presence transformed the guitar scene in Montevideo and, from there, the whole country. Vittone's guitar was on the scene through all of it.

Carlevaro went on to work with Heitor Villa-Lobos in Brazil, spent three years in Europe, and then retreated to Montevideo for nearly twenty years to shape his discoveries about technique into a system. From 1951 into the 1970s his classes and publications made him one of the most influential teachers the instrument has ever had, and a generation of Uruguayan players carried his ideas around the world: Eduardo Fernández, Álvaro Pierri, Baltazar Benítez, César Amaro and many more.

The 1958 LP Recital de Guitarra captures Carlevaro at the height of his powers. Orfeo confirms that the Ponce Folías on that record was played on this guitar. It is not often that the instrument on a historic recording can be held in your hands.

Uruguayan lutherie has deep roots as well. Musicologist Lauro Ayestarán traced luthiers in the territory back to the seventeenth century, and Sebastián Fulquet's Guitarrería Española was producing instruments in Montevideo from 1859. Vittone belongs to the generation that carried that tradition into the modern era, at exactly the moment the country's guitar culture was about to go global.

---

Very good structurally, and honest for a guitar of ninety years. There are several repaired cracks to the top and back, all closed long ago and reinforced with cleats that appear to be as old as the guitar itself. They are stable, they are part of the instrument's working life, and they do not affect how it plays. The top shows the wear and patina you would expect from nine decades of use, the finish has aged accordingly, and the original label is intact. The guitar is in great structural condition and plays beautifully.

---