Tag: guitar

2011 New Zealand Classical Guitar Composition Competition

Music by Gareth Johnston, Michael Calvert, Gillian Whitehead, Mike Nock, Michael Hogan, Anthony Ritchie, Campbell Ross

Matthew Marshall (guitar)

Theatrette, Massey University, Buckle Street

Thursday 17 November, 8pm

This recital was the public face of the first New Zealand Classical Guitar Composition Competition which has been organized by Matthew Marshall with collaboration from SOUNZ – The Centre for New Zealand Music – and the School of Creative and Performing Arts of Central Queensland University in Mackay where Matthew is Professor and Dean of the school.

In its first year the competition attracted 20 entries from New Zealand composers – students and professionals, resident both in New Zealand and overseas.

The earlier stages of the competition refined the entries to three finalists and these, along with four existing pieces, were played by Matthew Marshall in this evening’s concert.

The conditions called for pieces for solo, nylon strung classical guitar, with no stylistic limitations. Further, in his introductory remarks Matthew had described the aims of the competition as including an intention to enlarge the repertoire of guitar music in other than the Spanish and Latin American idioms.

The programme interspersed competition pieces with older pieces. The first of the latter was called Pasatanglia by Gareth Johnston, so called because it followed the pattern of a passacaglia in a tango rhythm: that demanded no special discrimination. Though it was garnished with a piquant chromaticism and its style and form derived from classical models, it presented no barriers to immediate enjoyment.

Matthew explained that he had known about Gillian Whitehead’s suite For Timothy of 1979 for some years, but it was only when he received it by mail from the Vice Chancellor of Massey University who had come across it in a second hand shop, that he decided to tackle it. It consists of two folk song movements – one Scottish, the other Northumbrian – framed by a Prelude and a Postlude. The latter offered melodic material and structures of a certain intellectual interest, ideas that were initially straight-forward but which soon took intriguing turns. The folk songs were treated with respect while at the same time being somewhat roughed up.

Mike Hogan lives in Port Vila, Vanuatu. His Two (of four) Studies of 2006 were studies in the Chopin sense: melodically engaging first and technically taxing only secondarily. Matthew uncovered the qualities of these rather slight pieces to offer them real charm. The last of the older pieces was the premiere of a 2009 piece by Anthony Ritchie called Sultry; typical of Ritchie’s music that succeeds in being engaging as well as revealing strengths that are likely to be peeled away and encourage repeat performances.

It goes without saying that Marshall’s  admirable, committed performances allowed them to be heard in the best possible context.

The results of the competition were announced after the recital by the manager of SOUNZ, Julie Sperring.

Third place went to Campbell Ross for his Two Dances, both, rather neglecting Matthew Marshall’s aspiration, in Latin rhythms – rumba and tango. Both were well-written, attractive pieces whose accessibility somewhat belied their sophistication. It earned a $400 prize.

Mike Nock’s Cytokinesis made its impact both through its melodic individuality and the composer’s ability to develop his variety of material in an organic way and through attractive chord sequences. I wondered however whether it had exhausted its inventiveness a couple of minutes before the end. Nevertheless, its sophistication, the way it handled scraps of related melody and its plain musicality clearly merited the second prize of $750.

First prize of $1500 went to Michael Calvert for Fantasia in August, that being the month in which it was composed. Let me quote the judges’ comment: “Fantasia in August is not simply a piece that can be played on a guitar, it is a guitar piece. Broody, moody, provocative, seductive, it drifts from cadence to cadence asking questions without answers. These come in the coda, the most eloquent passage of the work. To this point the musical language has been largely uncompromising. Here it softens, bringing with it a sense of resolution if not resolution itself. It is work of hidden depths that require more than a single listening to appreciate.”

All three pieces will be played at the New Zealand Guitar Summer School in January 2012, and at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Australia in May 2012
In addition, the winning piece will be played in the Purcell Room in the Royal Festival Hall, London in 2012.  And all three will be published in a volume by SOUNZ.

Unfamiliar music for violin and guitar works charms

Music by Almer Imamovic, Anthony Ritchie, Ciprian Porumbescu, and Ian Krouse

Duo Tapas (Rupa Maitra – violin; Owen Moriarty – guitar)

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 26 July, 12.15pm

A concert like this usually offers a variety of surprises: there’s the unexpected delight from particularly charming pieces of music, and there were several such instances; the experience of an unusual instrumental combination and the way music originally for others has adapted so well; and the realization that the world has never been so overflowing with beautiful, rewarding music – most of it, naturally, to be broadly labeled as ‘classical’.

The uncovering of hundreds of gifted composers of earlier times, who have come to be overshadowed by a handful of geniuses with names like Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, has given classical music a very different look over the past half century, with the realization that many of them sometimes produced better music than the ‘great’ ones did, on their off-days.

And in our age, there are so many talented composers in every country that no one could even claim familiarity with the names of many of the best of them.

Almer Imamovic is a good example: a guitarist and composer from Bosnia whom Owen Moriarty came to know when both were studying in Wales.

The pieces by Imamovic were originally written for flute and guitar, but the violin seemed the perfectly natural voice for the melodic lines. The Song for Marcus opened in up-beat style, bearing more sign of Turkish origin than of the Balkans, though of course most of the region was part of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries and there is a sizable Muslim minority in Bosnia. Based on two related tunes in the energetic opening section, then passing to a calmer middle section, the two instruments were in perfect balance and made one oblivious to the quite other character of the timbered gothic church where we sat.

Their final offerings were Theme for Caroline and Tapkalica, clearly from a similar source, the first a charming, simple melody which evolved very interestingly to subtly syncopated rhythms. In the second, the guitar began alone, with rhapsodic cadenzas which came to be a fine show-piece for the lovely musicality of violinist and the fleet-fingered guitarist.

The only piece from a dead composer, who came from the same part of the world, was that of Cyprian Porumbescu (from Romania: 1853-83). His Balada was filled with a Balkan nostalgia, exquisitely soulful but in music that found an equally captivating way to express quiet passion.

Ian Krouse is a Californian composer for guitar and other instruments (Wikipedia reveals an opera on Garcia Lorca); evidently eclectic, as his Air had an Irish tang in the lie of its melody; this too had its origin for flute and guitar and was more than comfortable in this perfectly idiomatic and charming account for violin and guitar.

Pieces by Anthony Ritchie occupied the rest of the programme. There are five parts to his Pas de deux, Op 51a, originally scored for two guitars; they chose Au revoir, evidently inspired by the end of a relationship which it described in lamenting but not lugubrious terms, using quite simple means to create an elegiac spirit; again, like the Balada, with a degree of suppressed passion.

It was not always easy to hear the remarks by the performers and I’m not sure whether it was pointed out that the Three Songs were a transcription of Ritchie’s Op 118 (Three pieces for viola and guitar). The title as given in the programme does not appear in his list of works.

Never mind.

Ritchie is one of those happy composers with sufficient self-confidence to allow tunes to appear in their music on a regular basis, and Au revoir and the Three Songs for Violin and Guitar (‘Song – Stone woman: a sculpture in Ilam Road, Christchurch’; ‘Tomahawk Sonnet’ and ‘Lovesong’) were so blessed. I had awaited a touch of Maori ferocity in the Tomahawk piece, but was later told it was the name of Ocean Grove, a suburb of Dunedin on the south coast of the Peninsula. It suggested a peaceful day. And the same went for Lovesong in which Ritchie seemed to be showing evidence of a heart repaired from the grief of Au revoir.

I’d heard none of this music before and the whole recital proved a delight, thanks to composers who knew their business and players who absolutely knew theirs.

NEW ZEALAND GUITAR QUARTET

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

ANDREW YORK – Lotus Eaters

PETER WARLOCK (arr.Owen Moriarty) – Capriol Suite

KAISA BEECH – The Storm

GEORGES BIZET (arr. Bill Kanengiser) – Carmen Suite

SCOTT TENNANT – Celtic Fare

JS BACH (arr.James Smith) – Brandenburg Concerto No.6

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (arr.Bill Kanengiser) – Capriccio Espagnol

The New Zealand Guitar Quartet

Jane Curry, Cheryl Grice-Watterson, Owen Moriarty, Christopher Hill

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 16th March 2011

As one can see from the NZGQ’s program, the evening consisted mainly of transcriptions, with a few original compositions. Given that two of these reworkings were of music originally for strings (JS Bach and Warlock) and the other two drew heavily for their original inspiration on music for Spanish guitar, the presentations seemed entirely apposite, and (with one reservation, humbly proffered by this non-guitarist!) were delivered with what seemed plenty of energy, sensitivity and stylistic integrity.

I’ve previously remarked in these pages on the uncanny ability of the guitar to bring its own characterful distinction to music written for other instruments; and the quartet of players certainly brought their skills to the fore, conjuring up and delivering a wide range of colour and dynamics to works whose textures responded well to the presentations. For me the only thing I found problematical (and only in one item, throughout the evening) was the circumstance in the final work, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, of frequent interruptions to the music for re-tuning – these hiatuses seemed to me to damage the atmosphere and sweep of the whole, and I was left thinking how “out-of-tune” the instruments would actually come to sound if left to their own performance devices for the sake of preserving musical continuity. I wondered whether a group of, say, flamenco guitarists delivering a larger-scale work which generated plenty of atmosphere, coloristic excitement and rhythmic impetus would similarly “sectionalize” the music to re-tune. I know that Rimsky wrote what seemed like “natural breaks” into his original score, but they’ve never seemed to me to be like those between symphonic movements, where there’s the usual concert-hall coughing and shuffling – one wants the music to press on, emphasizing the contrasts of the change of colour and impetus, and so on.

Interestingly enough, this was also the only work on the program in which I felt the performance lacked a bit of grunt in places. I found myself wanting to be more “transported” by it all (perhaps those “tuning breaks” were to blame) – I thought there needed to be more “schwung” to the rhythms during the final Fandango Asturiano, and simply a greater sense towards the end of of risk-taking and red-blooded abandonment (perhaps out-of-tune strings might have actually helped at that point!)…

Still, this is to risk nit-picking in the face of my overall enjoyment of an enterprising program! Delights there were aplenty – Andrew York’s attractive Lotus Eaters could have come out of a film similar to “Zorba the Greek” – I thought of the term “Mediterranean Road Music”, with, as Owen Moriarty reminded us in his spoken postscript, a very “LA” perspective. Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite was sheer delight, the opening Basse-Danse exploiting the antiphonal effects of change and exchange among the ensemble, and the jig-like Tordion featuring beautifully “covered” pizzicato tones, everything dying away to a whisper at the end. The players dug into the final Mattachins, with bristling flourishes of (in places) spiky harmonies, leading up to a satisfying “ole!” at the final chord.

A heart-stopping moment came for a young Wellington composer, Kaisa Beech, whose work The Storm was presented by the quartet, a vividly-presented picture of a passing thunderstorm, encompassing both calm and turmoil with telling impact. Another original work, from presumably a more seasoned composer, Scott Tennant (actually dedicated to guitarist Owen Moriarty’s parents) was Celtic Fare, a work which actually grew out of an arrangement the composer made of another composer’s work, and which formed the inspiration for two further original movements. Irish folk-melodies belled and echoed throughout the first piece, to be contrasted with hoe-down energies in the final movement. Pleasant, somewhat eclectic stuff, nicely turned by the ensemble.

In general, I thought the group gave the Carmen transcription a bit more edge than they did the Rimsky-Korsakov. Each section seemed to go with a swing, the opportunities for “layering” the texture with four instruments beautifully realized and nicely detailed in performance. Occasionally I wondered why the arranger chose to set the melody of a piece an octave lower that I would have expected (with the original orchestration in my mind’s ear), making for a less brilliant and clearly-etched effect than with the original. This happened with the Habanera, and the effect was of the tune being sung by a baritone at the outset – the change to a major key brought the melody up to its accustomed level – but it did seem strange at first, as with the Seguidilla, where the melodic lines sometimes got submerged in the surrounding textures – not the performers’ fault, assuredly! Throughout, the group’s rhythmic pointing caught the snap and lift of the music’s movement so beautifully, a slight rhythmic hiccup at the end of the introduction in the Gypsy Dance mattering not a whit, as the growing physicality of the dance caught up performers and listeners alike in ever-growing excitement.

But I couldn’t praise too highly the group’s realization of the sixth of JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. In true Baroque fashion, the music translated into the new instrumental medium as if fitting a perfectly-tailored glove – and the ensemble’s rendition of the individual lines brought so many deliciously-phrased strands of delight together with impeccable balance and osmotic teamwork.  The best performances of Bach have a certain feel of a living organism simply doing its thing, expressing its existence in its own unique, multifaceted way – and such was the case with the playing of the ensemble throughout the concerto – a performance that gave the very deepest of pleasure. Especially (and surprisingly) good was the slow movement, where the songful lines expressed an even more poignant quality than usual, perhaps through the notes being plucked instead of bowed, and therefore more subject to decay, as with all things to do with this worlds joye…….

The group gave an encore, occasioning a bit of “musical malapropism” on my part, thinking as I did that I’d heard it introduced as “Surrey Overnight” – however,  I found out later that its correct name was “Sarajevo Nights”. I fear my resulting abashment inhibited my critical faculties somewhat regarding this piece, as I can’t seem to remember much about it, except that it had an attractive calypso-like feeling, like a sort of jazzy chaconne. I’ve added my slip of hearing to my own private list of musical howlers……..

Guitar music by Andrew York, Radames Gnatali, Brahms, Piazzolla, Paulo Bellinati

Wellington Guitar Duo (Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty)

Old St Paul’s, Tuesday 8 September 2009

The guitar is not, perhaps, an instrument that you think of as devotional, adapted to what you do in a church. In fact, however, the delicacy and subtlety of this string instrument sits very comfortably in a fairly small church, especially one with such architectural and historic beauty as Old St Paul’s. The guitar, after all is a close relative of the lute and its keyed descendants such as the clavichord, harpsichord or spinet.

To its disadvantage is the relatively small repertoire of music of more than a century old, and the dominance of much of its recent repertoire by Hispanic dance music, not to mention the universe of popular music. We are not used to thinking about guitar music as being as important or as valuable as that of instruments more central to western European music tradition.

So it is common to fortify programmes with arrangements of acknowledged classical pieces: on this occasion the candidate was the Andante, Theme and Variations movement from Brahms’s String Sextet, Op 18, one of his best loved works, and music that, through John Williams’s arrangement, sounded extremely well on two guitars, overlooking those parts in which your mind’s ear longs for the low sonorities of a viola and cello. Its gently shifting harmonies seemed to be just what a sensitive guitarist would choose, though a repeated accompanying figure became monotonous in the fourth variation.

The programme of Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty began with a piece by United States composer and guitarist Andrew York. His Sanzen-in was inspired by the ancient temple and garden in Kyoto which, with gently syncopated rhythms in common time, evoked a past but not perhaps a Japanese past; the flavour was generalized Latin rather than Asian.

The rest of the programme was of South American music: by two Brazilian composers, Radames Gnatali (two pieces from his Suite Retratos) and Paulo Bellinati. Gnatali was born in 1906 in Porto Alegre (get out your atlas) and his four movement Retratos was composed in 1956 and arranged by the composer for many different solo instruments and ensmbles . The beguiling waltz, Ernesto Nazareth, recalled music like Granados’s Valses poeticos, with its attractive rubato and dreamy character; the second, Chiquinha Gonzaga, presumably named for a musician friend, exercised the two players’ rhythmic dexterity.

Bellinati’s Jongo ended the recital. Written in 1978, using one of the many Brazilian dance rhythms, it has become a standard in the guitar repertoire, and the duo’s performance was highly accomplished.

There were two very contrasted pieces by the famous Argentinian, Astor Piazzolla (which Christopher Hill explained he had transcribed from a recording because of difficulty in obtaining scores – one hopes, not just to avoid paying royalties). One, Zita, was one of his characteristically elaborate and complex tangos where one admired the players’ ensemble through the spiky, unpredictable rhythms; the second was Whisky, and indeed created a feeling of happy disorientation.

A programme of this kind made me aware both of the riches that the past half century have brought to the guitar repertoire and the depths of (at least my) ignorance of the world of Latin American music, apart from the few obvious names. Would it have been a good idea to have used a recital like this to elevate this music, by its presentation, to the status of a comparable recital of European classical music, with documentation in the shape of informative programme notes about the composers and the music?

It seems a shame to perpetuate the impression of guitar music, and Latin American music generally, as light-weight and not worthy of musicological attention, by not offering background material of interest to a (let us assume) musically cultivated audience such as comes to these concerts.