Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya: The Duet of a Lifetime

How Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya grew close remains a mystery: their first conversation, their first glance, the moment two separate careers began to become one.

It all began in a circle of guitarists in Paris.

In the early 1950s, every week, teachers, students, amateurs and concert performers gathered at “Les Amis de la guitare”, an association led by André Verdier. They played, they listened, and they talked late into the night about strings, scores and Segovia. That is where the two met, in 1951.

Alexandre was 22 at the time and had come from Alexandria, Egypt, where he was born to a Greek father and an Italian mother. He had arrived in Paris in 1948 with more than five hundred concerts behind him and was studying composition with Heitor Villa-Lobos. In France, however, almost nobody knew his name.

Ida, on the other hand, was 27 and already the most famous guitarist in France. She was born in Suresnes, just outside Paris, and her father had taught her the guitar from the age of six. She gave her first public concert at ten, and by twelve she was playing in the great Parisian halls and before the President of France. Segovia called her “Ida Prestissimo” for the speed and precision of her right hand. In 1947, she gave the French premiere of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”.

What began at those weekly gatherings did not end there. A year later, in 1952, they were married.

The decision of 1955

For the first few years, both continued their careers as soloists. At home, though, they played together, and what came out of their two guitars was more than either of them could create alone.

In 1955, they both gave up their solo careers to play only as a duo. It was a big risk. The guitar was only beginning to be taken seriously as a concert instrument, and music for two guitars barely existed.

So Ida started writing it herself. The very first piece composed for their duo was a “Sérénade”, written in 1955 and dedicated to Alexandre. On 31 December of that same year, she finished the “Valse de l’an nouveau”, a New Year’s waltz, also dedicated to him. A few years later, she dedicated “Danse rythmique” to him as well.

Most love letters are written in words. Hers were scores the two of them would play together.

Success

From 1958, the Presti-Lagoya duo began touring internationally and recording for RCA and Philips. Audiences and critics always noticed the same thing: the two guitars sounded like one. Phrases passed from one to the other without the slightest seam, like a conversation between two people who know each other perfectly.

Then the composers came. Joaquín Rodrigo, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Pierre Petit and Daniel-Lesur all wrote for them. Castelnuovo-Tedesco dedicated to them a concerto for two guitars and orchestra, and a whole cycle of twenty-four preludes and fugues. The repertoire that had not existed when they married now existed because of them.

From 1960, they taught together at the International Summer Academy in Nice. In all, they gave around two thousand concerts.

What remains

Their recordings are still listened to today, and the pieces Ida wrote for the duo are still performed. In Nice, an international guitar festival and competition bear their names.

How they fell in love, we may never know. But in the catalogue of her works, the first piece for the duo lasts four and a half minutes and carries a simple dedication: for Alexandre.