Recordings

Wenzel Thomas Matiegka (1773–1830) was born in Choceň in Bohemia, sang as a boy at the seminary in Kroměříž, and studied law in Prague before turning to music in 1800. In Vienna he became an organist and choirmaster, taught guitar and piano, and moved in Schubert’s circle. As Graham Wade notes in the booklet, Segovia, Bream and Williams, who did most to widen the guitar’s repertoire in the twentieth century, seem never to have had access to his music.

The first volume of Ilie’s complete cycle holds the two Grande Sonates published by Artaria in 1808, the Sonata in B minor, Op. 23, and the Sonate progressive, Op. 17. It was recorded over three days in January 2025 by Norbert Kraft, longtime producer of Naxos’s guitar recordings. The second and final volume follows at the end of 2026.

The second volume is recorded and completes the cycle. Naxos has scheduled it for release at the end of 2026.

His debut album, made possible by the Moștenitorii României Muzicale scholarship and recorded with Radio România Muzical in December 2021. It pairs Romanian music, old and new, with music from the Balkans, Italy and the United States, and opens with his own arrangement of Ciprian Porumbescu’s Balada.

“To me, Porumbescu perfectly captures the identity and essence of the Romanian spirit,” Ilie wrote. “It was precisely the sense of nostalgia and longing for home that compelled me to arrange it for the guitar.” The album was launched at Sala Radio in December 2023, and a second edition followed at the Romanian Athenaeum in October 2024.

Sonatas from Paganini’s Centone di Sonate for violin and guitar, with Tomescu on the 1702 “Elder-Voicu” Stradivarius. It is the programme that began their partnership on the 2022 Stradivarius Tour, seventeen concerts in thirteen Romanian cities. They recorded it in the spring of 2025 and presented the CD on that summer’s tour, at Cărturești bookshops in Sibiu, Iași and Bucharest.

Solo guitar music by the composer Tim Brace, recorded by Ilie and released as a series of singles and an EP.