1937 Hermann Hauser I SP/CSAR

This 1937 Hermann Hauser I classical guitar in spruce and CSA rosewood dates from the same year as the great Hauser of Segovia, and is fitted with a bronze tornavoz – one of the guitars heard on Marc Teicholz's CD "Valseana".

1937, the Year of Segovia's Hauser

This masterpiece was built in the same year as the great Hauser of Segovia, which he described as "the greatest guitar of our epoch". Segovia's guitar is now displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Sound and the Tornavoz

The sound of this instrument is out of this world – it has the very qualities that Julian Bream described as "teutonic": clarity, precision, balance and charm (listen to the videos above). The guitar is fitted with a "tornavoz" – a bronze conical tube attached to the soundhole, which adds a sonic boom to the bottom end and gives the trebles a brilliant clarity.

Heard on "Valseana" by Marc Teicholz

This is one of the instruments chosen for Valseana, the CD by Marc Teicholz – with its tornavoz it is the guitar of Prokofiev's Pushkin Waltz No. 2 (track 8). Beautiful and extremely rare, this is one of the most collectible guitars in the world.

Valseana – Marc Teicholz

Hermann Hauser I: Master Guitar Maker of Munich

Hermann Hauser Sr. (1882–1952) is best remembered for the remarkable instruments he built in the Spanish style after 1924. In that year, both Andrés Segovia and Miguel Llobet visited Hauser. Segovia was impressed by the quality of Hauser's work and wrote his impressions, noting that he "immediately saw the potential of this great artisan if only his mastery might be turned to the construction of the guitar in the Spanish pattern, as immutably fixed by Torres and Ramirez as the violin had been fixed by Stradivarius and Guarnerius" (Segovia in Guitar Review, 1954).

Segovia, Llobet and the Spanish Model

Segovia encouraged Hauser to build instruments based on his 1912 Manuel Ramírez guitar (built by Santos Hernández) after he examined and made measurements of this instrument. At this time Hauser also had the opportunity to examine Miguel Llobet's famous 1859 Torres, which would also become a decisive influence on the maturing "Hauser" style.