Recordings

This is just a selection to give an overview of no-nail playing. (You can find more recordings on Players page.) I’ll try to go more or less chronologically, beginning with one of the earliest recordings of a no-nailer: Francisco Alfonso playing Bach:

Next is a guitar duet by Emilio Pujol and his wife Matilde Cuervas, c. 1932. They are playing Pujol’s own arrangement of La Vida Breve by Manuel de Falla (an arrangement that is still commonly played by guitar duos). The audio quality is very poor — you may well need to turn up your volume — but the playing is superb. Pujol was arguably the most important no-nailer in the twentieth-century — as player, teacher, and historian.

Here is Manuel Cubedo playing one of the most famous guitar pieces (though of course not originally written for guitar!), Asturias, c. 1965:

A live recording from the 1984 Toronto Guitar Festival of Juan Mercadal playing the third movement of a guitar concerto by Radamés Gnattali. Mercadal was a such a dynamic, characterful player, as you’ll hear:

Now we move onto contemporary players, which means we have video! We surely have to begin with Rob MacKillop, who, through his recordings and writings, has done more than any other to resurrect interest in no-nail playing. He has made hundreds of excellent recordings that you should explore, but for now, here is a piece by Emilio Pujol, which Rob described as ‘Pujol’s masterpiece’ — I completely agree:

Recent years have also seen a blossoming interest in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century guitars, with many players adopting a no-nail technique to play these instruments. One of my favourites is the Italian guitarist Enrica Savigni. Here she is playing a guitar-fortepiano duet:

Here is Jon Mendle playing Fernando Sor’s most famous piece, Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart, op. 9. He is using a c. 1830 guitar, with gut strings, and is following Sor’s no-nail technique. It’s an extraordinary performance:

For contrast, here I am playing the last guitar work by the twentieth-century Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas:

Carles Trepat, one of my favourite guitarists of all time and a recent convert to no-nail playing:

Daniele Sardone, a guitarist with a strikingly individual sound I think, playing one of his own compositions:

Let’s end with possibly the youngest among us. Zlatko Josip Grgić, born in 2001, specialises in playing on Torres guitars, with gut strings and no nails. A promising player indeed:

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Many thanks to Tate Harmann who found and restored a number of the historic recordings that are linked to here and elsewhere on the site.