Often the SCGS arranges for visiting soloists in the Benaroya Hall winter series to hold master classes the afternoon following their performance. It is an in-depth encounter with the Master, several short recitals by the students, and analysis of many matters relating to guitar playing and performance. In this case we were rewarded with four students in three hours of intensive interaction. Tanenbaum is well-known for his teaching, both as faculty at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and through his three books, The Essential Studies, describing etudes of Sor, Carcassi and Brouwer, through his editions of sheet music, and in his recordings.
The afternoon began with a discourse on memory: the art of using musical structure, harmony and tactile/muscular senses as independent aids in memorizing (as well as 'learning') music. Spend time with the score, away from the guitar, reading and visualizing the left-hand work.
The first performer, Benjamin Wilson, gave us Debussy's Girl with the Flaxen Hair: a lovely, pensive piece, convincingly played. Tanenbaum gave us a history of Debussy's revolutionary role, taking the classic harmonic system of the 19th Century and 'exploding' it, giving it new rules. An unresolved dominant 7th chord could remain unresolved. What does the guitar bring to this piano music? There is the awkward problem of smooth legato, the piano giving us a flowing feeling which is difficult to sustain on the guitar; Tanenbaum wonders out loud whether we gain more than we lose by transcribing it for guitar. Working on this idea of unbroken legato, the piece is connected together rather than being a sequence of detached events. Fingering alternatives have to be explored to do this. There was much interesting detail, which can establish the guitar's unique voice in this music; as in a glissando (impossible on the piano) and vibrato (likewise). Vibrato can be improved by starting to 'oscillate' before striking the note. A 5-note chord can be engaged without being forced to do it as an arpeggio (hint; read Postlewate's books on 5-finger right-hand technique). It is impossible to recount all the useful demonstration of hand and arm postioning that followed, but relaxation of tension was high on the list. Wilson is a student of Steven Novacek in University of Washington's guitar performance program.
Brian Stone followed with a colorful and dynamic performance of the first movement of Torroba's Sonatina in A. Apparently Maurice Ravel, known for his orchestral 'coloration', liked this piece. Following through with this, Stone developed the piece with strong modulation and agressive tempo, effective muffled staccato runs. If anything Tanenbaum urged even greater modulations, accents and tonal contrast. Markings and accents are particularly valuable here. Some pizzicato technique was discussed (exercise by doing pizz-scales), and the importance in this piece of keeping grace notes light, so as not to derail the strong rhythm. Music like this brings out the guitars 'own' voices. Imagine this on the piano: no contest.
Tristan Bligh, graduate of the UW guitar program with Steven Novacek, played el Decameron Negro of Leo Brouwer (1981), with its wonderful color and fullness of 'new' sounds. David Tanenbaum carefully set the stage by describing the 1980s as Brouwer's move toward a 'new simplicity', directly tonal, and minimalist in structure, following his earlier modernist works of the 1960s and his intensive performance period of the 1970s. For many of us Brouwer's music is still new and complex. Here we could watch the careful discussion of theme and underlying background, the inner shape of the difficult arpeggiated sequences, the difficult 5 beat tempo, the frequent slurs. It was emphasized that compositions by great guitarists have fingerings and dynamical markings that are likely to be optimized, so take them seriously. There was a good discussion of scales: practicing modes in which the key is in putting left- and right hands together. Coordiation is everything, according to Julian Bream. As Scott Tenant advises, practice rasguedo even if you hate flamenco music, because the strengthening of the 'fling' will make your normal playing quicker. Some anatomy lessons come in here, recognizing the problem of the i, m and a right-hand fingers with different length and different dependences on one another. 'a' has a less flexible tip joint, and sometimes 'hangs behind' the other fingers. Yet, it is somewhat independent of 'i' and can make interesting use of p-i-a triplets. Lutenists love 'p-m' sequences despite the mismatch of strengths ('p' was made so that our ancestors could grasp big sticks or snakes or whatever, making it strong but slow).
Daniel Lee, a student at Decatur High School, concluded the afternoon with performance of the two Gavottes from J.S. Bach's A minor Lute Suite, BWV 995. These are familiar classics, and it was fine to hear them and then hear them analyzed rhythmically. The gavotte was a dance with a jump! And, surprisingly the jump is the resolution (tonic downbeat), as in 'step,step, jump, pause'. In fact this writer remembers Joseph Silverstein, the somewhat portly violinist and concert master of the Boston Symphony, giving a violin lesson by dancing round the room while singing the gavotte and simultaneously playing his Guadanini instrument. The discussion turned to right-hand technique, bringing out volume and intensity without 'plucking' the strings with a soaring right-hand follow-through. By setting the right-hand fingers with flesh on the strings, doing the free stroke more in the plane of the guitar top, darker, stronger chords emerged. Here and earlier we learned that the tension in playing such music should be balanced by relaxation between notes, building rest intervals into the the technique in a spirit of economy (apparently Pablo Casals, being asked how he plays with such intensity, said that he finds time to rest between the notes).
Interaction with the auditing audience was encouraged and all expressed delight at David Tanenbaum's advice and inspiration. For those who were tantalized by Tanenbaum’s performance of Hans Werner Henze’s ‘Shakespearian’ Royal Winter Music the previous evening, a new CD of this work is expected this year: keep an eye on www.davidtanenbaum.com.