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Paco Pe帽a first started playing the guitar at the age of six; it was his older brother's guitar, and since there were nine children in the family, all living in two rooms in a crowded house in C贸rdoba, he had a ready-made audience right from the beginning. He made his first professional appearance at the age of twelve, and toured through Spain before moving to London in the 1960s, where he found himself sharing concerts with Jimi Hendrix. Over the last fifty years, he's established a world-wide reputation as a pre-eminent master of flamenco guitar. He's a composer, too, of both a requiem and a mass in flamenco style.

In Private Passions, Paco Pe帽a takes us back to the Spain of his childhood; this was only a few years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and he describes the country he was born into as "fragile and tortured". He talks too about making a living as a musician on the Costa Brava, where he met his wife, and about what it was like to arrive in London in the 1960s, a time when flamenco guitar was relatively unknown.

Music choices include Mozart, Beethoven, de Falla - the Argentinian composer Eduardo Fal煤 - and Bach, the composer Pe帽a always listens to before going on stage to perform. He includes too the track he regards as flamenco at its quintessential best, by singer Camar贸n de la Isla and guitarist Paco de Luc铆a. And he gives away a few trade secrets about how to master passionate flamenco strumming - it involves painting your fingernails with glue.

A Loftus production for 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke.