Alice Artzt 20Th Century Guitar Music

AhCeArtZf 20th Century uit u DUARTE Variations on a Catalan folk song • FALLA Homenaje, pour le tombeau de Debussy EASTWOOD Ballade-Phantasy • HENZE Drei Tentos • TANSMAN Cavatina & Berceuse d'Orient MIDDLETON Processional & Virginia Reel A66002 20th Century Guitar Muslc stereo Alice Artz!,guitar SIDE 1 has so far consisted of vocal music and works connected in some since, except for a five-year sojourn in the United States (1941-6). John Duarte way with the theatre or opera house, indicating that this quiet and His many compositions include seven symphonies, concerti, Variations on a Catalan folk song, op.25 11'10 modest man reveals the depth of his feelings through his music ballets, and chamber works. When Segovia asked him to write rather than on his personal surface. The Bol/ade-Phantasy, written a piece for the guitar, apprehensive of the frequently esoteric style Theme {'Canc6 del Lladre') in 1968 and first performed the following year by Julian Bream, of Tansman's works in relation to the instrument, he said: "When ii Risoluto reflects its hyphen in its bipartite structure. It opens quietly with you write for the guitar, you must first wipe your pen clean". The iii Molto lirico a single-note motif which, together with the single bass note added Cavatina with which Tansman responded (in 1951) shows how iv Vivo e con forza to its first statement, contains the germinal material from which well he learned that lesson - one of which he has never lost sight. v Lento a piacere the work is developed. The first part is dominated by the interval Its four movements are written in a tuneful, transparently vi Con bravura of a semitone and steadily builds to a climax of almost pianistic textured, conservatively harmonic style, well suited to the guitar; vii Con del ica tezza intensity before subsiding to a quiet and tentative close. The they are Pre/udio, Sarabonde, Scherzino and Barcarol/e. The robust viii Finale second part opens with clear emphasis on the interval of a tritone, Danza pomposa was written as an optional last movement for the now emerging from the subsidiary role it played in the first part, Cavatino, and this and the gentle Berceuse d'Orient with its Tom Eastwood to endow the music with an intensity and unease that does not reluctance to finish, require no analysis or explanation to enhance Ba ll ade-Phantasy 8'26 relax until, two-thirds of the way through, a serene and un- their enjoyment. compromisingly diatonic ostinato enters, supporting quietly Hans Werner Henze 'remembered' fragments of melody. The ostinato itself becomes Processional & Virginia Reel Owen Middleton (b.1941) Drei Tentos 6'18 fragmented, once more contributing to a feeling of suppressed Owen Middleton mastered in Music Composition at Florida unease that does not entirely disperse even at the end when, after State University in 1965 and studied the guitar with Alexander SIDE 2 a modified restatement of the opening, the work closes with two Bellow in New York. He now follows a dual career as concert Manuel de Falla quiet but mildly inconclusive chords. Frequent changes of time guitarist and teacher in the United States. The Processional seems Homenaje, pour le tom beau de Debussy 3'07 give the music as a whole a quasi-improvisational quality. Tom to picture the passing of a procession - mounting tension as it Eastwood's comment, when asked if he would like to add any- approaches, the crux as the central figure passes, and a withdrawal Alexandre Tansman thing informative, was characteristically English and Elgarian: "It of tension as the cortege recedes. The composer however claims Cavatina 15'18 was written in Majorca; the first part in a garage, the second in that it is no more than the development of the simple motif with i Preludio a villa." which it begins. There is no such 'problem' with the Virginia Reel, ii Sarabande a straightforward and slightly mischievous representation of an Drei Tentos, from Kammermusik 1958 Hans Werner Henze iii Scherzi no American square-dance, probably derived from the Scottish reel. (b.1926) iv Barcarolle Hans Werner Henze is a German composer whose many works The two pieces are taken from a suite of five, the Lullaby, Dance v Danza pomposa include symphonies, concerti, cantatas and ballet music. He and Elegy being omitted. Berceuse d 'Orient 4'13 studied with Wolfgang Fortner and Re ne Leibowitz; though both Notes by JOHN DUARTE his teachers inclined strongly towards twelve-tone writing, Henze Owen Middleton does not subscribe to any particular doctrine or dogma. Processional and Virginia Reel 4'03 Kammermusik 7958 is written for tenor voice, guitar and eight instruments (five strings and three woodwind); the guitar part is Alice Artzt (b.1943) showed an early aptitude for music, optionally playable on the harp. The guitar alone accompanies studying both the piano and the flute. Her conversion to the Vari ations on a Catalan folk song, o p. 25 John Duarte (b.1919) three of the songs and contributes to the accompaniment of guitar at the age of thirteen was characteristically both positive During 1957, John Williams played the incidental music for several others; it also plays the three Tentos as solo interludes. The and immediate and she subsequently studied the instrument in a production of Lorca's in the West End of London. One of Yerma " Tento", or "Tien to", is an early musical form related to the France with Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya, and in England with the pieces he used was a Catalan folk song, Conca de/ L/odre ricercare but it is the spirit rather than the substance which Henze Julian Bream. She also studied composition with Darius Milhaud ("The Song of the Thief"), and these variations were wrhten in evokes. The titles of the three interludes have some relevance to and did graduate work in composition and musicology at response to his suggestion that it would make a suitable theme for the 'messages' of the songs they separate. The first, Du schemes Columbia University, New York, in which city she now lives. such a work. Each variation is based upon reshaped fragments of Biich/ein, despite its constant change of time-signature, has On the occasion of Miss Artzt's London debut in 1969, the the original melody supported, in all but the finale, by extended a serene flow and a crystalline clarity; it bubbles and chatters its critic of The Daily Telegraph wrote of the "power, and refreshing variants of the original harmonic sequence. The succession of keys way into the guitar's highest register - a little brook th at is not exuberance" of her playing, and since then critics in Europe, Asia, from one variation to another follows the bass line of the original deep enough to touch the guitar's lowest depths. The second, Africa, Australia and the Americas have unanimously acclaimed setting by Miguel Llobet with which the work opens - D, E, Es findet dos Aug' oft, is a curious, dissonant piece gathering her performances. George Clinton has described her (in Guitar F sharp, F (= E sharp), E (minor). A, D. Variation 1 is built from energy as it progresses from a hesitating and discontinuous magazine and on the BBC) as " America's best guitarist", and the a rhythmic variant of the opening of the melody, and upon the opening; though fragmented, the middle section offers an almost great South American guitarist Maria Luisa Anido, who heard her original harmonies contrasted with distant relations; Variation 2 songlike line. Henze has lived in Italy since 1953 and the third play in Buenos Aires, has said that" Alice Artzt is now the best grows out of a characteristic curving fragment of the melody, Tento is a 'thank you' to his host country - as Falla's Psyche was woman playing the guitar in the world". A recent English critic together with its inversion and diminution; Variation 3 is skittish to France, (coincidentally another work for solo voice with has named her one of the top four guitarists in the world, along and difficult, a fragment of the melody recurring in skipping chamber accompaniment). This last Tento, an amiable contrast to with Segovia, Julian Bream and John Williams. octaves; Variation 4 has rich variants of the original harmonies the second, is a sunny little work that makes use of a Neapolitan Since her international debut she has toured Europe extensive- alternating with a sequential derivative of part of the melody; song of Henze's. ly more than a dozen times, and performed throughout North Variation 5 grows out of the same melodic fragment as that used America. She has also made frequent tours to almost all of South in the previous one. This bravura termi nates firmly with a 'Tierce Homenaje, pour le tom beau de Debussy Manuel de Falla and Central America and Mexico, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the de Picardie' completing a modal cadence. Variation 6 is a minuet (1876-1946) Near and Far East. Her solo programmes include a wide range of built on a redistribution of the original harmonies and having its Manuel de Falla was one of the leaders of the moveme.nt, at styles from Renaissance and Baroque lute music, which she melody entirely in octave harmonics. In the Finale the strongly the beginning of this century, to establish a characteristically studies from the original tabla tu re, to contemporary compositions. rhythmic but severe theme with which it opens is interwoven with Spanish school of composition and thus to end the domination of She has had numerous works dedicated to her by twentieth- an obviou.s variant of the opening of the theme, giving ample Spanish music, during the preceding two centuries, by composers century composers including Duarte of England, Santorsola of scope for technical brilliance.

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