Italian guitarist Giacomo Copiello has shared a performance of Schubert’s Der Neugierige, from Die schöne Müllerin, on the eight-string Brahms Guitar. The video presents the original song’s score and words alongside the solo-guitar performance, with English subtitles also available.
For Copiello, the words remain part of the interpretation even when there is no singer. In material sent to Classical Guitar Review, he describes how the text shapes a phrase’s hesitation, breathing and emphasis: “I’m interested in what remains of a song when nobody is singing it.”
That interest in vocal music also runs through Lieder, his 2023 Stradivarius album of Schubert and Mendelssohn transcriptions. The video gives viewers a way to follow the relationship between a song’s text and its instrumental retelling.
Copiello plays a Brahms Guitar built by David Rubio in 1995. He says the instrument previously belonged to Paul Galbraith, who passed it on to him in 2016. Its fan-fretted design and additional bass and treble strings extend the guitar’s register in both directions, providing a wider range for his transcription work.
His research into the instrument led to a doctorate in Music & Media at the University of Surrey under composer Stephen Goss. He also created The Brahms Guitar Archive, a resource documenting its history and repertoire, and founded Trascrizioni Festival in Vicenza.
Watch Copiello’s performance of Der Neugierige on YouTube. Further biographical information is available on his official website.
Photograph courtesy Giacomo Copiello.
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