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I think almost everyone would agree that one of the most enjoyable things about guitar music is listening to the real pros do the thing right! It's also an important part of learning; a very quick way to discover new repertoire, at the very least (especially bearing in mind my sight-reading skills...) Also, something that is easy to overlook is just why these "greats" are great. It's easy to listen to a torrent of correct notes and spot the difference between that and your own playing, but the difference doesn't end there. Listen a little harder and you'll hear a whole world of musicality that puts Segovia, Bream, Williams and the rest up on the next level. This is where I find the most pleasure and, of course, inspiration. Listening to the way these players phrase and shape the music with control, a broad palette of tonal colors and a little bit of magic... This article is the first (but hopefully not the last!) in an occasional series devoted to some great recordings, and is likely to include well-known artists and repertoire as well as some more unusual recordings that I feel are worth a mention. This is not a review column as such; really it's must a few recommendations towards building a good library of recordings. And after all, everyone's entitled to my opinion! What with all this hullabaloo about the [1998-1999 SCGS] International Series I thought a good place to start talking about CDs is probably with the artists that we can look forward to seeing later this year. The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is a prodigious bunch of fellows. From their first two CDs (one with a previous line-up) for the GHA label they moved to Delos, a label which has won awards for its Seattle Symphony recordings. Dances from the Renaissance to the Nutcracker is a collection of many familiar tunes and some of the stunning arrangements that have become a trademark of this talented group. An Evening in Granada continues the tradition with an Iberian flavor, and includes the two perennial favorites, El Amor Brujo by Manual de Falla and the Introduction and Fandango by Luigi Boccherini. Their next release was a collection of more contemporary repertoire including some material written specifically for the quartet, and the disc takes its name from one of those pieces: Labyrinth. This work, written by Ian Krouse, is based on a theme by Led Zeppelin, and if that thought puts you off, don't let it! The music is written in a contemporary style but is very entertaining and incorporates a number of different guitar styles (including steel-string and slide!). Their most recent release, For Thy Pleasure, takes them back to the realm of transcription. It is a collection of Baroque music that highlights their elegance and tremendous sense of ensemble. An additional treat is their arrangement of a less well-known tune by Johann Pachelbel, apparently known as the Loose Canon... If anything could give you a good introduction to the resourcefulness of these four musicians, I would put my money on this one. I cannot talk about the collaborative efforts of these musicians without giving a brief mention to the solo recordings of three of them. William Kanengiser has recently released this third solo CD for the GSP label, a collection of music from the Caribbean which contains transcriptions that recall his first release and his remarkable arrangement of Mozart's Rondo a la Turka. His second CD, Echoes of the Old World, is a collection of more contemporary works and includes a marvelous recording of Domeniconi's Koyunbaba. Scott Tenant has two recordings for the GHA label, a "recital" disc which includes Bach's Fourth Lute Suite, Torroba's Suite Castellana, Rodrigo's Sonata Giocoso and more, and Volume One of the complete solo guitar music of Rodrigo (Volume 2 is due for release soon, plus a recording of the Aranjuez concerto is in the works). Tennant has a remarkable technique and is completely at ease with the intimidating physical demands of Rodrigo's music, allowing his characterful itnerpretations to sing through. Most recently he released an interesting collection of music with a 'Celtic' flavor (although the qualification is a loose one) for the Delos label. Andrew York, the composing member of the LAGQ, has two solo CDs for the GSP label. The second disc, Denouement, is all original compositions in the appealing folk-like style that has earned him enormous popularity as a composer. The first, Perfect Sky, contains a mixture of originals with other miniatures such as Vince Giuaraldi's theme from "Peanuts", Linus and Lucy, and Couperin's Mysterious Barricades, as well as the original Sunburst, also recorded by John Williams. Steven Novacek is a player who is probably familiar to many of you, but a side of him we rarely get to see these days is his ease and grace as an ensemble player. The Gypsy Influence is a fine collection of music for two guitars, recorded by Steven and his old duo partner Gary Bissiri that received much critical acclaim. There is also the collection Novarags with his equally talented brother John on piano featuring arrangements and original rags for the two instruments together. Complementing these two collaborative efforts are his two solo CDs, Music of the Americas for the Ambassador label and a selection of music by Fernando Sor for the Naxos label. These two discs are not only fine in their own right but taken together serve to highlight Novacek's ability to capture the essence of the music: he is equally at home with the music of the Argentinean papmas as he is with the 19th-century Parisian salon! David Russell's recording catalogue is sadly more extensive on vinyl (remember that?) than on CD, but some old gems made the transition to disc and he's come up with some new ones, too. The two early recordings on the GHA label are my own two favorites: the Aguado Adagio and Rondo by itself is worth the price of admission for his 19th-century collection, and the Baroque collection is perhaps the finest example of cross-string trilling to be heard! A two-CD collection of Francisco Tarrega's music for the Opera Tres lable should satisfy just about anyone's yearing for these delightful miniatures, and even the most familiar of these tunes are played with such impeccable taste that they seem fresh to our ears. Most recently Russell has recorded for the major label Telarc, and this partnership has given us a collection of Barrios, Torroba and most recently the three solo guitar concertos of Joaqui Rodrigo, Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, Concierto para una Fiesta, and of course the Concierto de Aranjuez. The music of Barious and Torroga seem to be ideally suited to Russell's suave playing and both these collections are thoroughly satisfying, in particular the Barrios, whch mixes some of the best-known "hits" with the many less well-known or unusual ones, and of course Russell's scintillating tremolo is very much in evidence. Remember: turn on, tune up, and play out! -- The Disc Doctor This installment of "Tales from the Disc Doctor" is an homage to the long-running British radio program Desert Island Discs. Guests on the show were asked to imagine that they were to be marooned on a desert island for the rest of their lives, and then pick ten recordings they would choose to have with them. This is a challenging task, and here I present my own list, in alphabetical order – picking a top ten was hard enough, don't ask me to put them in order of preference!
-- The Disc Doctor I'd like to start by thanking those of you who wrote in to say how much you liked my last list of recommendations, and this column is in response to some requests for more "standard" repertoire and also some intermediate repertoire recordings. I'll also mention a couple of you who wrote in complaining about my choices for "Desert Island" discs and just say that that's what the recycling bin is for! I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here (or shouldn't that be "fret two notes with one finger"?) and talk about the Naxos Guitar Collection. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, Naxos is a recording label that has a huge catalog of budget-priced CDs, meaning that they sell for about $7. They list all sorts of classical recordings in their catalog but of primary importance to us is their Guitar Collection, a project headed by the Canadian guitarist Norbert Kraft to record all the major parts of the guitar repertoire. This is expected to eventually comprise 150 to 200 CDs! The current catalog runs to about 40 or so, and I'm going to mention a few that deserve some special attention. Naxos's Guitar Collection is split into two categories: standard repertoire recordings, and the "Laureate Series". The artists on the latter discs are recipients of the Naxos Prize awarded at the Guitar Foundation of America competition every year, and not necessarily to the winner of the GFA competition. Needless to say, this is an excellent showcase for some very talented players, and a good opportunity for us to hear some pretty standard repertoire. A couple of discs that I think deserve a mention are those of Antigoni Goni and Jeffrey McFadden. Both discs are full of things any student of guitar should be familiar with, and should aspire to learn if they are not working on them already! Ms. Goni's disc includes Mompou's Suite Compostellana, Brouwer's El Decameron Negro, Rodrigo's Invocacion y Danze, Barrios' Un Sueno en la Floresta, and Domeniconi's Koyunbaba, all played with a musicality that is refreshing. McFadden gives us a slightly wider historical perspective, venturing out of the 20th century with Granados' Valses Poeticos and Coste's Rondeau de Concert. Also we are treated to Ascencio's Collectici Intim, Henze's Drei Tentos, Barrios' La Catedral and Rodrigo's Tres Piezas Espanolas. Both discs are well-played recitals of music that every guitar lover or student should be familiar with. On the "standard repertoire" side, there are several recordings that stand out to me as "essential listening" for the serious student. Nicholas Goluses's Sor recording comprises a couple of concert pieces, approachable by perhaps more advanced students, but more importantly the Op. 60 studies. These were Sor's easiest pieces, and excellent early material for a player to use to hone his musical and technical chops. Two discs of equal merit are Ricardo Cobo's Volume 1 of the complete works of Leo Brouwer and Adam Holzman's Manual Pince, Volume 1. Both discs contain an assortment of shorter works by the respective composers but also some core repertoire: the 20 Etudes Simples of Brouwer and the 24 Preludes of Ponce. Arguably the 20th century counterparts to the studies of Sor and the other 19th century virtuosi, these collections give invaluable training for the music of our times. As a guitarist, Brouwer's pieces reflect more of the technical side of the Etude as a form, although mainitaining a high level of musical content at the same time. This disc also includes the Tres Apuntes, one of my two favorite Brouwer works. Who could ask for anything more? Ponce's writing is less ideally suited to the guitar; in fact, Segovia felt that some of these preludes should not have been published although in retrospect we can find value in every one of them. They present challenges for the player that a guitarist-composer would rarely dream of posing (like reading five flats, or six sharps!) but are musically so rewarding that the difficulties are soon overcome. As I've said before in this column, Ponce is perhaps my favorite composer for the guitar, and there's plenty of evidence to back that up here. Two more discs to mention, both by Norbert Kraft: the complete solo guitar music of Villa-Lobos and a collection of pieces by Sor, Aguado, and Tarrega. The music of Villa-Lobos is about as "standard repertoire" as you can get, and even if we aren't all up to ripping through Etude 7 at a hundred miles an hour, we should at least know what it sounds like when someone else does it. The collection of 19c miniatures is, by comparison, a wonderful collection of pieces that are widely available in many different printed music collections, and many of them are easily enjoyed by the least-experienced of players. A good introduction to some easy pieces, and there's nothing like having a CD to practice along with! So, a good handful of recommendations. And more are appearing all the time! Naxos pumps them out at such an alarming rate that probably a few have emerged between my writing this article and you reading it! A couple of new ones that I plan to keep an eye out for are the Laureate collections by Fabio Zanon (who gave ane excellent concert in Seattle last year) and Steve Kostelnik (a fine player and personal friend of the Disc Doctor's). One thing to bear in mind: in some cases these CDs are the only recordings available of some of the repertoire, but in others the choice is quite wide. For example, amny similar Villa-Lobos recordings exist (including an excellent one by Fabio Zanon) and to be perfectly honest I haven't actually heard Norbert Kraft's -- none-the-less, he's an admirable player, and for $7 you can't go far wrong, can you? If you're an incurable disc-aholic then some other comparisons to consider would include Alvaro Pierri's Villa-Lobos, the Brouwer studies of Phillipe LeMaigre or Costas Cotsiolis (which includes a knockout recording of the Sonata, my other favorite work by Brouwer), and the Ponce Preludes by Horst Klee. In my ever-to-be-humbled opinion the more expensive recordings generally have the edge musically speaking, but it didn't stop me from buying both versions... -- The Disc Doctor Think of this, gentle reader, as a sort of "Desert Island Discs 2" follow-up to my previous article on favorite recordings. Mabye "Discs Off the Bench" or "Pinch-hitting Discs" would be a good working title -- all these recommendations were close enough to making the original top ten that I feel they deserve a mention, and should certainly prove to be at least as entertaining in their own right.
-- The Disc Doctor |
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