The SCGS 2004-5 season opened in style with the first Frye Museum Sunday concert (‘free at the Frye’ or, as this season’s series is called, ‘A World of Guitar at the Frye’). Paul Taub, flute and Michael Partington, guitar, presented a varied collection of duets, beginning with J.S. Bach’s E Minor Sonata, BWV 1034 (1717), originally written for flute and continuo: sometimes realized with three voices: flute, harpsichord and cello. Bach’s flute sonatas have some mystery attached to them: some are thought to have been composed by someone else (C.P.E. Bach in one case)! A total of 11 sonatas, partitas and trio sonatas featuring flute are listed at www.jsbach.org. It is said that most of the sonatas call on both instruments equally (rather than relegating the continuo to a quiet tinkle in the background). The E minor sonata is a work of great depth and distinction. David Russell has transcribed it for guitar solo, but it really benefits from the power and sonority of the flute. In this arrangement, by Partington, the guitar plays a prominent, if somewhat subdued role, not choosing to call on the lowest register of the instrument. The Andante is strikingly beautiful (and is the movement that caught David Russell’s attention to the piece). The final Allegro was a tour-de-force for both instruments, and I felt that here the guitar made its strongest case. It was quick and stunning.

Taub's expressive playing was displayed well in this program. In four of Robert Beaser’s Mountain Songs (Barbara Allen, The House Carpenter, He’s Gone Away and Cindy), we see three Appalachian/English folk songs plus one newly composed. This work was nominated for a Grammy (for Best Contemporary Composition) in 1986. The pieces were composed for Eliot Fisk and Paula Robeson, and appear on more than one of Fisk’s CDs. They are adventurous, yet easily appealing with their familiar underlying themes. With Fisk and Robeson in mind, they are also challenging, and convey some new (to me at least) wrinkles of sound. As one thinks over the many ways in which folk songs are used in classical music, these seem to stick truer to the original spirits than most. They are respectively, pensive, playful, sad, and again playful. A range of color and dynamics is added, in somewhat the spirit of Aaron Copeland’s orchestrations. Beaser asks the flute to enrich its voice and vocalization, and Taub responded enthusiastically. Michael Partington, having earlier admitted to once playing in a country music band in England, responded appropriately to the rhythmic Cindy (...Oh Cindy). These are true duets, and while the composer seems more at home with the flute’s voice, the impact of the closely coordinated rhythms of guitar and flute were joyful.

In Toru Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea (The Night, Moby Dick, Cape Cod), we encounter a very different spirit. The alto flute was introduced here, with great effect. No Paul Winter whale imitations, these songs were spare and introspective.

Yo amaba Lucy (I Love Lucy) by Michael Daugherty was a new adventure meant to convey some of the mixture of unpredictable wit and Latin rhythm that Lucy and Desi Arnez brought to the tv screen one half century ago.

The audience was, one might add, very enthusiastic in their response and this brought forth an encore, Bela Bartok’s Six Rumanian Folk Songs. Perhaps it is unfair to the other fine composers to say so, but one sensed that a master had entered the room, and sat down beside J.S. Bach, at this time. While the set of songs was not a virtuosic work, nor was it written for this combination (originally for piano, transcribed for violin and piano by Bartok’s contemporary, violinist Zoltan Szekely), there were clear and convincing melodic lines and delicate balance between the contrasting instruments. The first folk song is a ‘stick dance’ (dancers navigate round flower garlanded sticks); interestingly, the third dance is normally played on flute. Three are probably gypsy fiddle melodies, according to Roy Howat’s liner notes to a Hyperion recording

Paul Taub, is on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts, and is a founding member and Executive Director of Seattle Chamber Players, and Michael Partington is a prominent Seattle-based performer and teacher.

With this concert as evidence, we are in for an exciting year of guitar and its companions, and we have to thank the stalwart organizers of the Frye concerts for booking such a promising season.