Yet another guitar
recital! I hear someone say. I may
tell you straightaway that this is not
the traditional guitar recital one might
expect. This one is entirely devoted
to guitar works by 20th Century
composers of different generations and
horizons, among whom Takemitsu and Brouwer
are likely to be most familiar. The
other composers may be less familiar
(they were to me anyway) although Krieger,
Coeck and d’Angelo seem to have made
some reputation with works for guitar.
Tristan Murail, however, may be a name
one would not readily associate with
this instrument. He is rather better-known
as a composer of the so-called spectral
school and as an Ondes Martenot player.
Brazilian-born Edino
Krieger is the oldest composer featured
here. After early musical studies in
Rio de Janeiro, he travelled to the
States and studied with Aaron Copland
at the Berkshire Music Centre and with
Peter Mennin at the Juilliard School
of Music. Later, another scholarship
allowed him to study with Sir Lennox
Berkeley. Ritmata, that
gives this recital its collective title,
is a brilliant Toccata in all but the
name (although its original title was
Toccata and admittedly inspired
by Prokofiev’s piano toccatas). It is
a virtuoso piece and a splendid recital
opener (or an audience-raising encore)
by any account.
Takemitsu’s All
in Twilight, written for and
first performed by Julian Bream, is
a suite of four short sketches, mostly
slow-moving and meditative, which will
surprise no-one familiar with his music.
Interestingly enough, however, they
are not played as a suite here but rather
as interludes between some of the other
pieces.
The Belgian composer
Armand Coeck has several works for guitar
to his credit, including a Guitar Concerto
composed in 1996 and first performed
by Carlos Bonell. Constellations
is a substantial work alternating meditative
and livelier episodes reflecting the
feelings and emotions one may experience
when looking at a beautiful starry sky
at night.
D’Angelo’s Due
canzoni lidie, both appropriately
exploiting the Lydian mode, are somewhat
simpler and lighter, but nonetheless
very fine. I imagine that this lovely
diptych could (and should) become quite
popular with guitarist and audiences
alike, were they heard more often. A
delightful miniature anyway.
A guitarist himself,
Leo Brouwer is particularly well-known
and appreciated as a resourceful composer
of many works for guitar favoured by
guitarists. Many of them have been regularly
recorded, e.g. by Naxos who have already
released three discs entirely devoted
to his guitar music. Paisaje cubana
con campanas is a favourite
among guitarists and one of his most
popular works with El decamerón
negro or Elogio de la
danza, to mention but two of
them. (Incidentally, my favourite piece
is the ravishing Retrats Catalans
for guitar and small orchestra recorded
several years ago by Eduardo Fernandez
on Decca 430 233-2.) The music is entirely
based on F and keeps moving from and
returning to it throughout the whole
piece which is a minor masterpiece of
invention and imagination.
Tristan Murail is a
foremost exponent of the so-called French
spectral school. His Tellur
is, no doubt, the most substantial and
the most demanding piece here. I hasten
to say that it challenges the player
to some extremities, but the listener
is in no way assaulted or aggressed.
Quite the contrary. This impressive
piece is, to my ears, most idiomatically
written for the instrument, beautifully
inventive and quite appealing and accessible,
for all its technical complexity. This
is, to my mind, a major addition to
the repertoire and the real gem in this
collection.
In the early 1960s,
when I was still a budding music-loving
teenager, I read an interview of a celebrated
guitarist of the day (pardon me, but
I cannot now remember his name) who
was asked if he played any contemporary
music at all. He turned his guitar upside
down and started strumming on it, and
replied Yes, I do! Well, nothing
of that kind here, but a well-planned
and immaculately played collection of
some very fine, too little heard recent
works for guitar that are all well worth
a hearing, all fully idiomatic and quite
rewarding, musically speaking. Hughes
Kolp’s carefully prepared and subtly
varied readings serve the music in the
best possible way and are given one
of the finest recorded sounds I have
recently heard.
So, in short, guitar
buffs or not, I urge you to look out
for this magnificent release.
Hubert Culot
Hughes Kolp (guitar) 