Month: August 2023

CONTRA

Contra Guitar Duo

Move Records MCD 644

IMPULSES

Hamish Strathdee

Move Records MCD 645

No sooner does Move put out one guitar duo recording than another comes hot on its heels. The Contra ensemble comprises Hamish Strathdee and Emma-Shay Gallenti-Guilfoyle, musicians who met as students 12 years ago. In this brief collaboration, they perform four works: Segovia’s slight Divertimento, an arrangement by Angelo Gilardino (the recently-deceased Italian guitarist/musicologist) of Puccini’s bagatelle for strings Crisantemi of 1890, three pieces by Australian Phillip Houghton (the first from 1976, the latter two from 1990), and Alexandre Tansman’s Variations on a Theme of Scriabin, originally a solo work written in 1972 for Segovia and here arranged for two by German guitarist Tilman Hoppstock.

Simultaneously, Strathdee has produced an EP of his own, on which he performs some works that inspired and ‘accompanied’ him across his student and professional years. These meaningful Impulses include two movements from Bach’s Keyboard Partita No. 1: the Saraband and Gigue as arranged by Hoppstock. As well, the disc contains Leo Brouwer’s 1996 Hika, In memoriam Toru Takemitsu, and a flamboyant piece of virtuosity in Napoleon Coste’s Le Depart, fantaisie dramatique Op 31 of 1856 which, like Beethoven’s sonata, also features a return.

Both CDs are rather short: Contra lasts 26’24”, Impulses 19’0″. Quality in small doses, you’d expect. And that’s the way the duo disc begins. Not that Segovia’s small-scale Divertimento makes claims to depth but these executants give it a handsome outing with a freshness of delivery – dynamic variation, linear attack (or its absence), rubato at logical points – that demonstrates a flawless confidence in each other and an affection for this F Major bagatelle. You can best read the collegiality in bars 15 and 16 when the imitations and counterpoint stop for a moment and the pair play a series of chords together – a generous balance obtaining here as it does in the piece’s four final bars which serve as a crisp chaser to the exercise.

As far as an arrangement goes, Gilardino’s work on Puccini’s Chrysanthemums shows a staid mind at work, Guitar 1 generally getting the top violin lines, Guitar 2 taking on viola and cello, although that can vary e.g. Guitar 1 taking up the cello’s bass note (F sharp in the original) across bars 57 to 62, and taking the viola part at bar 92 and beyond. As you’d expect, the piece’s fabric is necessarily changed, these performers not having the luxury of drawing out melody lines or being able to muffle accompanying semiquavers which are a feature of the middle segment starting at bar 32. Still, their treatment is consistent in its elegiac nature and takes its time negotiating the structural cracks.

The Mantis and the Moon is the first of Houghton’s Three Duets and it falls into two unequal parts, even if there are hints of a combination at the end. The opening is a march with triplet underpinning: quite brash, aggressive, with clear suggestions of the insect’s stridulations (to my over-active sensibility). This Prokofiev-style abruptness suddenly changes to a new landscape of an angular melody lying over a muted regular quaver support which stands in for a placid moonscape, with some suggestive antenna-waving in the final measures.

Lament is an elegy for one of Houghton’s friends, the composer/pianist Andrew Uren who died in 1989. The piece works as a threnody above a slow, constant bass; its atmosphere is funereal, verging on dirge-like but leavened by a strong melodic line that reaches a fierce highpoint before sinking back into the sombre inevitability of the piece’s opening. Alchemy is all movement and flashes of colour, operating over a sort of continuous undercurrent of triplets. Its 6/8 motion transforms into hemiola-like 2 crotchets in the bar at the end – a striking passage with vehement chords from both players. Houghton imagined his performers sparking off each other, the music mutating throughout – and so it does, although you can’t avoid the suggestions of the old scientific search for gold formed from disparate elements.

Finally, we’re treated to Tansman’s set of six variations on Scriabin’s 12-bar Prelude Op. 16 No. 4, originally in the recherche key of E flat minor. The Polish composer begins by moving the key to B minor (which I think Hoppstock has followed) and dividing the original between the players. I can’t see much difference from the original in the first two variations beyond a doubling of the melodic line. As well as an added richness of chording (all in keeping with Tansman) that operates throughout the longer Variation 3, the work gains from a sense of ease where the original’s responsibilities are shared.

I can only see one point in Variation 4 where the arranger adds anything beyond some doublings and transpositions down an octave, and that’s an unexpected semi-harmonic appearing at the start of bar 6; the rest moves placidly along its lento path. Again, in the Variation 5 quasi Mazurka, you can enjoy the part-writing more readily because of the division of responsibility, particularly in a page that holds a fair share of accidentals. To end, Tansman goes fugato with some close writing that threatens to progress into something full-blown – but then the contrapunctus stops in its tracks and he rounds off the piece by re-stating Scriabin’s prelude with a subtler harmonic content and the addition of a cadence-reinforcing last bar.

This is excellent work from both Gallenti-Guilfoyle and Strathdee: a sensitively structured partnership, obvious from the shared level of responsiveness, not to mention the technical balance and simultaneity on display, Not just in this Tansman, either; I doubt if Houghton’s duets have been better served by the various artists who have performed them since Tim Kain and John Williams issued their version in 1995.

MOVING to the Strathdee solo disc, his Bach sarabande is rather languorous in approach, with a few delays in getting off this dance’s pivotal second beat. Speaking of which, the second-beat chord in bar 8 has lost some of its components in this arrangement and the upward transposition of the original’s left-hand demi-semiquavers in each half’s last bar strikes me as unsatisfying. And I, for one, would have welcomed repeats! The reading of the gigue showed the player’s clarity of output and the piece avoided becoming a study – just. Strathdee repeated the first half but not the (admittedly longer) second part. I don’t know whether it was intentional but I missed the two ornaments in bars 5 and 7. In his transcription of the entire partita, Hoppstock moved the original tonality from B flat Major to D Major; a much more congenial arrangement for this instrument’s aficionados, of course.

Has Leo Brouwer incorporated any original Takemitsu strands into his elegy/eulogy? It’s hard to tell. He begins with a set of epigraphs, detached on the page and articulated as separate units by Strathdee. But, as we move into the piece, each fragment enjoys a generous variety of treatments: arches expanding or contracting by a short interpolation or its absence; flourishes of accidental chains that end in a suspended harmonic; two bursts of brief velocissimo; a central vivace providing for an abrupt volte face in personality before the initial calm resumes. Strathdee gives a vigorous account of this last but takes his time over the meditative stretches; importantly, he makes sense of this abschied‘s emotional permutations, setting up the initial framework with obvious empathy.

One authority has linked Coste’s Le depart to the Crimean War and the piece certainly has an emphatic martial quality. It’s not hard to read what you like into the piece’s progress so that, by the time you get to the concluding Le retour: marche triomphale, it’s clear that the military have been involved. Added to which, the first edition has a date for this concluding section – December 29, 1855 – by which point the war was almost over and it’s conceivable that Coste was indulging in a bit of chauvinistic self-congratulation; if the French troops (those that survived) weren’t already home, they were on their way.

Strathdee follows the piece’s narrative with an enthusiastic embrace of its emotional switches. A fulsome Andante Largo could accompany a soldier’s farewell coloured by patriotic aspirations; it’s certainly a personal, possibly sentimental statement, and framed in a positive E Major. The interpreter gives the soprano line a wealth of expressiveness, enriched by some brief inter-note glissandi/slides. Then the fireworks begin with some martial trumpet calls at an Allegro assai of 28 bars that suggests action, if rather well-organized. A brief three-quaver chord progression leads to an Andantino in B Major and an Agitato of 10 bars (the wounded followed by a final flurry before the peace is signed?), and we’re into the somewhat overlong E minor march, which continues the piece’s inspiration of serving as a brilliant display-piece for its creator – and later guitarists (a lot of them) – to display dexterity and responsiveness across this fine flower of mid-19th century Romanticism.

Le depart works well as a finale to Strathdee’s mini-recital which moves across a vast period of history with success. One of the finer factors of both CDs is that neither hits the all-too-familiar Spanish/Latin American repertoire that has been flogged mercilessly by guitarists for decades. You are spared the transcriptions of Granados, Albeniz or Falla; there’s not even a Piazzolla mundanity bringing up the rear. In fact, the only Spanish piece offered is an actual guitar duo written by the dominant figure in guitar across the last century.

It’s also worth noting that the more arresting sequences on both discs are semi-contemporary: Brouwer’s salute to his dead friend, and Houghton’s triptych. Still, the duo has (I hope) much more up their communal sleeve and you’d have to be confident that their next recording will be a more sustained experience for us all.

SIDEKICK

Ziggy and Miles Johnston

Move Records MCD 648

This duo has been around the country – and overseas – for some time. At this point, both musicians are studying – as a guitar duo – at the Juilliard School in New York where their craft will continue to be honed to an even finer point. As is inevitable, these musicians have won prizes from operations like the Guitar Foundation of America, the Adelaide International Guitar Festival, and the Concert Artists Guild Competition. The brothers’ second CD, as far as I can tell, oscillates between Brazilian/Spanish voices and home-grown ones, with sideways glances at one of serious music’s best-known vignettes in Debussy’s Claire de lune, and Welsh composer Katie Jenkins‘ Sidekick, written specifically for these players by a co-student at the famous American academy.

Ziggy and Miles begin their excursions with Jongo, a rhythmically clever piece by Brazilian guitarist Paulo Bellinati; it alternates 6/8 with 3/4 in a time-honoured Latin tradition and bases its development on a catchy D Major tune that doesn’t venture outside its home key. We hear a cut version of this arrangement because the musicians omit about a minutes’ worth of ‘percussion work towards the piece’s ending where performers have the option of snapping strings at various points along the neck/fretboard or slapping the instrument’s side, outlining the same rhythmic interplay that has featured so far in the piece.

It all makes for a nice study in ensemble and this duo comes up trumps, even if the last bar’s arpeggiated chord is prepared by a carefully-considered chain of what you’d expect would be rapid acciaccature. Still, its determination leaves you in no doubt that we’ve reached the end of this frolic.

This is followed by the three-movement Tonadilla of Rodrigo. which you can find on YouTube, the Johnston brothers giving a most focused reading of this brightly textured suite. The initial Allegretto ma non troppo sets up the composer’s trademark 2nds, placing E in one instrument against E flat in the other, the bitonal suggestion a continuous spur as the players exchange material and unite for full-blooded rasgueado chords with sparkling clarity.

The second movement Minuetto pomposo doesn’t really get affected until a fair way in, beginning with a delectable alternation of material and spice added by ‘wrong-note’ chords like the opening D Major chord in Guitar 1 set against an F sharp minor triad on Guitar 2; this polarity persists but it’s not that remarkable – just a muted form of bitonality. The stately section starts well into the piece’s centre with a definite change of character, into the minor if anywhere, and a definite strut to the rhythmic motion. A series of concerted common chords (recalling bars 11 and 12 of the opening segment) follow a cadenza for Miles Johnston, and we return to the opening material and a curt conclusion.

Then the concluding Allegro vivace is an infectious rondo, notable for some stunning scale passages from both players. Here, the harmonic spikiness is underplayed although Rodrigo can’t bring himself to complete orthodoxy. But these pages exemplify the finer points of this duo’s abilities – from the carefully managed rubato and decelerandi to the fine timbral eloquence from Ziggy Johnston in a mid-movement minor mode bass-line solo, and the combined effervescence of the concluding bars’ semiquaver unison run.

Now we come to the CD’s longest track in Granados’ Ochos valses poeticos, written sometime between 1886 and 1894 for piano solo. All of them have been transcribed for two guitars, some of them by several arrangers, but the Johnstons have chosen the version assembled by the duo of Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar. In fact, the waltzes are preceded by a bright march-like introduction and the first of the dances recurs as a postlude to the whole collection. Right from the start, you’re aware of transpositions across bars 10-12 where the piano in alt can’t be handled by the guitar; as well, you hear a few supernumerary bass notes starting 13 bars from the introduction’s bridge/conclusion. But the players capture effectively the good-humoured charm of this preface.

Most of the waltzes are a page long in the original; repetitions abound, as they do in Chopin and Brahms, and the Johnstons give great pleasure in their ease of delivery and supple gradations of tempo and timbre. You can’t fault them for accuracy either with many striking passages of close duet. For all that, the waltzes are amiable salon matter, their phrases falling neatly into four-bar patterns with nothing needlingly sharp to their gentle progress. Certainly, the first Melodioso holds the most memorable melody, well worth revisiting at the conclusion to Waltz 8’s Presto in contrasting 6/8 and 3/4 (only an unadventurous two bars’ worth of this).

But the inner pieces have considerable charm under the Johnstons’ care: the gentle, ascending chromatic pattern of the second Tempo di valse noble; the slightly off-kilter shape of the following Valse lente with its groups of three four-bar phrases; an abrupt muffled pizzicato effect in the Allegro umoristico at bars 21 to 24, and later at bars 29 to 32 which are treated with precision by both players in turn; a telling Viennese-style hesitancy applied in Waltz 5, meltingly effective at bars 11 to 18 the first time round; followed by a carefully shaped Quasi ad libitum where the performers take their time but do so with a single mind; the impeccable realization of Gruber and Maklar’s division of labour in the Valse 7 Vivo, even if the piano’s full-blooded chords (e.g., bars 6 and 8) have been thinned out.

The set displays the brothers’ command of Granados’ none-too-complex emotional landscape in these unsophisticated bagatelles. Even the more introspective waltzes (Nos. 3 and 6) make no bones about the modesty of their forays into a (slightly) darker world. Still, the pieces meld successfully into each other, in this instance because of the interpreters’ uniform interpretative vision.

I’ve not much to say about the Johnstons’ transcription of Debussy’s famous piano extract from the Suite bergamasque. Their approach emphasizes the pages’ innate calm, even at the En animant change of key for six bars at the work’s climax. And the transcription manages to keep the melody line prominent – although that might be due to the players’ subtle treatment of the splayed chords/arpeggios at the un poco mosso from bar 27 on. An agreable 5 minutes’ worth.

Most senior of the three contemporary voices is Nigel Westlake‘s Songs from the forest in its original duo guitar form of 1994. I’ve heard the Grigoryan brothers play this work, possibly at Monash University – more a matter of history than actual reminiscence. It has a catchy opening gambit in the best Westlake style and the composer brings this back to round off his sonically effective score. Interpreters are kept busy with a wealth of effects and rhythmic slips and slides, demonstrating Westlake’s insights into his instruments’ capabilities. As expected, the Johnstons find the mellifluous melodic passages and the mildly aggressive interludes suit their partnership down to the ground and – if anything – the work accelerates in interest the further it advances.

Jenkins wrote Sidekick in 2021 during the COVID outbreak at the invitation of the Johnstons. It is intended to be a reflection of the brothers’ relationship, both fraternal and professional – which immediately presents interpretative problems. Which one is the sidekick – Miles or Ziggy? Or are they both each other’s offsider? I guess that Jenkins doesn’t have any narrative in mind; she’s not committing to a story like Macbeth, Don Juan or Till Eulenspiegel but potentially essaying a pair of thumbnails like Lavine or Pickwick. Yes, certain moments present intimations of sequential thoughts racing between the instruments, or even complementary ideas that find common expression, as well as times of divergence from each other.

All the same, the composer is at some pains to outline a kind of aesthetic compatibility where competing flurries of action lead to a common end, quietly fusing into a shared output. The experience is heightened by listening to the track through headphones where the two voices are spatially separate. But that’s the case for the whole CD, by which means you can detect the labour division – or better, the sharing of responsibility. Jenkins’ language is pleasantly catholic, moving into old-fashioned harmony near the piece’s conclusion but tracing a lightly acerbic path in its central pages.

Written last year, Ken Murray’s Trin Warren Tam-boree depicts wetlands in the north-west of Melbourne’s Royal Park; specifically, the bellbird waterhole that sits there, just behind those yellow and red slanted pillars that mark the Tullamarine Freeway’s starting point. Also written for the Johnston brothers, this presents as a meditation on the area’s restless placidity, the piece’s forward motion dominated for the greater part of its length by a minor 2nd oscillation: D-C sharp-D, for example. Over this underpinning, the players outline Murray’s wide-ranging melodic output, the whole complex packed with incident but not alarmingly so. This is an expertly pitched soundscape, created by one of the city’s leading guitarists and a solid contribution to the still-slim catalogue of serious Australian music for duo guitar.

Here is a welcome exposition of the Johnstons’ obvious talents, well placed in a field of musical practice that is not quite unknown or unrepresented but has rarely been graced with such expertise in execution. Admittedly, a substantial track (Granados) and a slight one (Debussy) are arrangements, but the execution of those and the original two-guitar works is exceptionally fine. This CD was recorded at the Skillman Studio in New York and the artists have been well-served by an operational team which captured every detail of their polished interpretations.