Pavane has produced some fine discs of obscure
music but its booklet notes sometimes leave a lot to be desired.
A skimpy, enthusiastically vacuous column really isn’t enough,
especially as I’m sure the note writer has confused Legnani
with Gragnani (it was the latter who spent thirteen years in
Vienna; Legnani was a much welcomed visitor but not, so far
as I can find out, a resident). Paganini’s guitar works are
reasonably well known; Giuliani is known for very little else;
as for Gragnani and Legnani they were marginal figures in the
world of domestic, salon or instructional music making though
the former’s virtuosic Caprices seem to be making a resilient
return to the repertoire.
The flute and guitar duo was an eminently sane
and portable form of making music; its appeal was to undemanding
listening, frequently decorative or operatic transcriptions,
popular songs and watered down sonatas. Occasionally it made
greater demands when composers mined a vein of wistful melancholy.
Gragnani’s Sonata is a charmingly constructed affair – the guitar
offering supportive, and once or twice decisively attacked chordal,
support or rippling beneath the melodic line. Constructed of
a theme and variations the second movement is attractively lyrical
whilst the finale, an Allegro spiritoso, is splendidly brisk
and at two minutes in length (of a seventeen minute work) roguishly
trivial. Giuliani has a more complete profile than most composers
for guitar. His Grande Sonate is a comprehensively accomplished
work that never exploits virtuosity for its own sake but instead
evinces a rather stately and affecting air, from its Maestoso
opening to the significantly titled Allegretto espressivo; Giuliani
always encourages affectionate phrasing. Paganini exploits some
attractive little clashes in his Sonata concertata with emphasis
on lyrical expressivity to which this duo is very well suited.
In the final movement the guitar assumes the initial flute melody,
then the two share it – most imaginative writing from a composer
whose virtuoso reputation tends to occlude his consistently
remarkable melodic invention (listen to the orchestration of
the Violin Concertos if you doubt it). Luigi Rinaldo Legnani
was a friend of Paganini and they toured together during 1836-38,
giving concerts before the crowned heads of Europe. He later
returned to Ravenna and carved a new career – literally – as
a guitar maker of outstanding renown. The Duetto is substantial
but of slighter immediate interest; tuneful, well-crafted, making
clever variation demands without plumbing depths it’s the ideal
duo work of its kind. The church acoustic is rather too booming
for absolute clarity of articulation but it does cushion the
slow movements and envelop them in an attractive glow.
Jonathan Woolf
Phillipe Depetris,
flute 