The Aquarelle Guitar Quartet was originally established at the
Royal Northern College of Music at Manchester by students of Craig
Ogden and Gordon Crosskey. In its present incarnation it is a
fine, accomplished group and the understanding of the idioms relevant
to the music on the present CD cries out from every track. My
only quibble is with their choice of name – a term which refers
to thin watercolours seriously underplays the vibrancy and drive
of their work. I say this even if their playing does also have,
at times, the subtlety and transparency one might also associate
with aquarelles.
Most of the music
here is engaging without being especially profound. Two generations
of the Brazilian Assad family are represented, father Sergio
and daughter Clarice. Sergio Assad is a distinguished guitarist-composer
and this performance of his Uarekena no doubt benefited from
the fact that the group spent a week with Assad shortly before
making the recording. It shares its name with one of the Amazonian
tribes, the sense of such a geographical background partly evoked
in the chattering cross-rhythms of this intriguing piece and
its flickering alternations of dense and simple textures. Clarice
Assad is represented by Bluezilian and Danças Nativas. The first
was premiered by the Aquarelle Quartet in 2006 and is an infectious
confection of the phrases and rhythms of blues and jazz as well
as of such Brazilian genres as the samba and the baião. A similar
mixture characterises the first of her three Native Dances,
Twisted Samba (with a glance at Antônio Carlos Jobim’s Samba
Torto), samba rhythms underlying some jazzy harmonies and phrases;
the second movement, Reflective Cançao does indeed start off
as a thoughtful song before morphing into a lively waltz. The
third, Mad Baião, interweaves intriguingly the rhythms of the
baião with some sharply strummed phrases. Ms. Assad’s music
is witty and cool, constantly inventive and always pleasing
to the ear.
The longest work
here is a six part suite by Roland Dyens, the important French
guitarist-composer; Brésils is an attractively various work,
its movements grouped in a clearly structured fashion. Its first
movement, De Natureza, echoes musically the natural sounds of
the Amazon, full of clicks and rustlings, chirrups and whispers,
miniature explosions of activity and brief silences, insect-
and bird-like patterns of call and response. Chôro Legal moves
us into a human world, a world expressed in relaxed and flowing
music, a sense of human friendship and communication. Its relative
intimacy is succeeded by the more public music of Marchinha
do ceù (Celestial March), which audibly alludes to the drums
and marching bands of the Carnival. Things are very different
in Modinhazùl, predominantly introspective and sad, imbued with
a kind of graceful and dignified melancholy. The penultimate
movement, O Spirito do João is dedicated to the legendary figure
of João Gilberto and, aptly enough, is a bossa nova. The suite
closes with Xaxarê (the title relates the piece to a Brazilian
dance, the xaxádo, traditionally associated with the bandits
of Pernambuco, which takes its name from the sound of sandals
beating on sand); Dyens demands the use of extended techniques
from the players in a piece full of percussive writing, a reminder
of the contribution to the language of Brazilian music made
by its large population of African slaves.
No musical representation
of the ‘Spirit of Brazil’ could be complete without Villa-Lobos.
Here we get an arrangement of the familiar (and still lovely)
melody from the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras; much arranged as
this piece is – and one can understand why many ensembles of
different kinds would wish to play it – I always find myself
hankering for the original, even in a good arrangement such
as this. The witty Brincadeira (A Joke), the brief second movement
of the composer’s first String Quartet of 1915, works well in
its new form.
Pauolo Bellinati’s
A Furiosa alludes, according to the booklet notes by Michael
Baker and Rosy Russell, “to the incredibly virtuosic street
musicians of Brazil, known as ‘The Furious Ones’” and is a contagious
piece based on the maxixe, which has been described as a kind
of Africanised polka.
Egberto Gismonti,
classically trained - including two years in Paris with Nadia
Boulanger - is one of the great musical eclectics, a multi-instrumentalist
(and vocalist) whose interpretation of the Brazilian tradition
is informed by his familiarity with the languages of jazz and
classical music, the blues and African music as well as by his
openness to the folk music of other cultures. He is a great
improviser and the duet version of his Palhaço has been transcribed
(by James Jervis) from a recorded performance on piano and synthesiser
– the results are beautiful, a gently melancholic meditation
of great character. Gismonti’s Memória e Fado closes this fine
album, played by the duo of Mike Baker and Vasilis Bessas, an
intimate and wistfully reminiscent piece of nostalgic loss;
one only misses the evocative lyrics of the original.
This is CD whose
pleasures have grown and grown with repeated listenings, as
new subtleties are noticed and the perfection of the ensemble
work becomes more evident.
Glyn Pursglove
Aquarelle
Guitar Quartet: Michael Baker, Vasilis Bessas, James Jervis, Rory
Russell 
