Ida Presti

Ida Presti (1924 – 1967), born as Yvette Ida Montagnon, is considered by her admirers to be the greatest guitarist of all time.

Her father was already a passionate music lover who hurried from party to party in his spare time to perform there for dance. One evening, when he went to a concert by A. Segovia, he was so shocked by his playing that he decided to make his child a“great guitarist” as well.

So even before Ida was born, he began to teach himself how to play the guitar so that he could teach his child later.

Already as a small child he put Ida at the piano and began to systematically train her on the guitar, mainly on the basis of records by A. Segovia. He paid particular attention to training her the necessary discipline of a virtuoso by holding her for hours on end.

An ordeal that later led I. Presti to say: “I never had a childhood.“

But despite everything, she seemed to have loved her father very much and learned so much from him that she had no other teacher until the end.

In addition to this hard training, she seemed to have a natural talent for the guitar because she made such rapid progress that she gave her first concert at the age of ten and was the only artist who already played as a child in the “Société des Concerts du Conservatoire” and “Les Concerts Pasdeloup.”

“At the age of ten she already has a secure technique … her full tone and the variety of possible timbres is extremely enchanting …” (“Le Figaro”, 1935).

“An innate feeling for music, an extraordinary sense of rhythm.” (“Aux Ecoutes”, 1935).

“La Presse” declared: “Ida Presti is currently the youngest, most amazing and promising young guitar virtuoso.”

Even Emilio Pujol called it a “miracle of skill and grace” in 1935.

When she was thirteen years old, she played for the then already world famous Andres Segovia. His succinct opinion was: “I can’t teach her anything more … she shouldn’t take advice from a guitarist anymore.”

But in the same year she also had to overcome the most serious crisis of her life. Her father died and from then on she was solely responsible for her family. So she was forced to appear again and again and to keep herself and her relatives afloat with the meagre income.

The war years and the years after were also full of difficulties. However, there are hardly any records from this time, because Ida Presti preferred to remain silent about this part of her life.

Especially remarkable is the recording of the “Serenata Espanola” by Joaquín Malats. Today the piece is rarely performed, because it has become unfashionable to deal with salon music.

But fortunately, important interpreters such as J. Bream or A. Diaz have taken up the piece and a recording of the composer himself is also available.

Above all, however, no one would expect this mature interpretation to have emerged in the hands of a fourteen-year-old girl.

At the age of nineteen she married Henry Rigaud and one year later her daughter Elisabeth was born.

Together they lived in the south of France, near Marseille, where Ida took care of her daughter and younger sister and gave numerous concerts.

During this time she slowly began to free herself from the rigid corset into which her father had forced her. Her innate nature became more and more popular and she loved to sit improvising on her guitar until late at night and sing for her friends. It was these experiences with singing and the human voice that later always dreamt of her as the ideal of phrasing.

In her twenties, the “Female Mozart“, as critics meanwhile called her, constantly astonished the audience with her wonderful playing and her youthful charisma. She has not only given concerts in the big concert halls, but has also visited numerous small provincial towns, especially in France.

In 1948 she was selected for the French premiere of the “Concierto de Aranjuez” and broadcast live on the radio for the first time. The success was so overwhelming that she got her own radio show, “Notes sur la Guitare“, which opened up a completely new circle of admirers for the guitar.

After the Second World War, her marriage was now divorced, she was a welcome guest in the house of André Verdier, a guitar lover whose house was the “Les Amis de la Guitare” (Friends of the Guitar).

Many music lovers made a pilgrimage there just to hear Ida Presti play. Among them was a new admirer of Presti, the Italian-Greek guitarist Alexandre Lagoya.

One night Ida Presti heard him say, “That’s the best guitarist I’ve ever heard.” Interestingly, the two had developed a similar technique under completely different circumstances.

After their first contact at Verdiers’ house, their common interest in music soon led to a deep affection and so they became the dream couple of the guitar scene.

After she married Alexandre Lagoya and had her second child Sylvain, Ida decided to give up her solo career and only perform together with her husband.

The fruit of their joint work was the most important guitar duo in the history of the instrument, which became a model for all following generations. Even the brothers Assad had to admit that they had originally based their repertoire on that of Presti / Lagoya.

The press was unanimous in its praise: “remarkable” (Washington Post), “dynamic” (New York Times), “a shock” (San Francisco Chronicle), “one of the wonders of the world” (Le Combat, Paris).

In her final years Ida began teaching at the Academie International d’Été in Nice together with her husband. Yet, according to the unanimous opinion of her students, she was a great teacher.

Guitarist Aaron Skitri gives us the following reason: “Whenever she taught a gifted student with a distinct musical personality, she let him do what he wanted to do and encouraged him in his own musical ideas.” She says, “She was always a good teacher.

How far ahead of her time she was! Presti was not a teacher of the “old school” who told the pupil how to interpret a piece of music, but was happy if she could assist and accompany him on his way.

Her unexpected death shocked music lovers worldwide and robbed the guitar scene of one of its most important members.

The obituaries of them give us only an idea of what we have lost through their early passing away.

“She taught me that the guitar can express music, only music.” (Pierre Petit)

“Great, pure, wonderful artist.” (Daniel Lesur)

“For a short time we had a genius among us and it is almost impossible to meet another one of this kind during our lives.“ (John W. Duarte)

Alexandre Lagoya said about her:“Sensitive, sensitive, passionate, with extreme seriousness – she was a genius. No guitarist or guitarist in my whole life has moved me like she has. She was the music in persona. I believe she was the best guitarist of our century. She was something inexplicable.“

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