At a private event in Rio de Janeiro, the brothers performed for Roberto Vidal, director of the renowned Paris Competition in France. Impressed, he invited them to give the closing concert of that edition—whose president would be the legendary Andrés Segovia.
For the repertoire, they decided to take a risk, against Monina’s old advice to restrict themselves only to classical pieces. After encountering Radamés Gnattali’s work—pioneering in blending classical and popular—and performing the “Suíte Retratos” arranged especially for them by Gnattali himself, Sérgio felt inspired to expand the duo’s repertoire with his own transcriptions and compositions. One of the first he wrote for the pair was an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Escualo.”
In Paris, after a program centered on classical works by Couperin, Giuliani, Pierre Petit, and Albéniz, the brothers surprised the audience in the encore with pieces by Gnattali and Piazzolla. The success was enormous and marked the beginning of their European career. From there, the next step seemed inevitable.
Shortly after, in 1981, they were invited to perform in the 92nd Street Y concert series in New York. The recital received critical praise, including a blockbuster review in The New York Times, which hailed them as the new great worldwide revelation of the guitar.
Soon after, they signed with the renowned agency Harold Shaw Concerts, and their international schedule began preventing long stays in Brazil.
