I'm afraid I am going to have to retract that last comment. She does not seem to have developed as an artist. Let's have a look at this clip from YouTube:
I just want to talk about the first piece, the three movements of the Suite Castellana by Moreno Torroba. This is a lovely piece that is not well-known in its full form, with all three movements. The reason for that is likely that Segovia only recorded the first two. Ana Vidovic's tendency to misread accidentals in Torroba (partly because there are some misprints in the published scores) returns here with a vengeance--there are a bunch of them in the Fandanguillo. If you either play this piece, as I do, or know the Segovia recording, you will be wincing several times. Another problem is the phrasing: she seems to just have the wrong instincts about where and how to use rubato. Another problem is the tuning once we get past the 40' mark the guitar sounds out of tune. More misread notes leading up to the worst musical phrase: the last pizzicato section taking us to the final chord is rhythmically weird and confused. The pizzicato isn't even very good and it is inconsistently applied.
She redeems herself with the Arada, the second movement, but it is nothing really special. The Danza is where things go horribly wrong. Honestly, if you want to know how this movement should sound you have to listen to Pepe Romero, he is the only one who "gets it." Vidovic plays the opening phase much too fast and leaves out a beat in the third iteration. Then she slams on the brakes for the middle section. The repeated note phrase that begins the movement and leads us back into the opening theme she delivers with absolutely no shape.
Two mysteries here: first, what is going wrong with Ana Vidovic? It now appears that she was never terribly gifted as a musician, but had considerable technical skills. She still has them, but is growing careless, especially about musical matters. I even hear a few sloppy places here and there. The other mystery is in the comments to this clip on YouTube:
No micro-mistakes wow... this is high-level virtuoso playing! Ana is truly a one in a million guitar player with outstanding memory, dexterity and musicality
Ana Vidovic has such a clarity and mastery of technique, my only regret is that I did not discover this great artist sooner.
This amazing artist brings a whole new level of sensitivity and a superb technique to these pieces. Beautiful to listen to and so calm and relaxing to watch.
Such beautiful playing - true artistry - letting the musicality of the peice ring out rather than playing too fast. Brilliant.And hundreds more! What to think of that? Of course, I could simply be wrong about her. But I'm not. If you like I can consult the score and tell you exactly what notes she misreads and what beats she drops and what places she obviously phrases poorly. These things are not subjective. Mind you, you do have to know the piece and have played it for years. But I have long had this naive belief that real musicianship is always sensed by even non-professional listeners. And that they can also discern poor musicianship even though they may not be able to put what the problem is into words. I guess I was wrong about that...
Ok readers, time for you to weigh in.
15 comments:
Dyens' work seemed so clearly a mixture of jazz and more traditional classical guitar music I think that Dyens and Vidovic are apples and oranges. I admit I cut guitarist composers who keep on composing a certain amount of slack I won't cut to dedicated performers. Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton or even Jimi Hendrix could have off days but when the musical idiom you work in has so much improvisation, for instance, you have sloppy days and clean days.
As fusions of jazz elements into classical guitar techniques, even extended techniques go, I thought Dyens was fun but I kept coming back to guitarist composers more in the vein of Leo Brouwer, Angelo Gilardino, Dusan Bodganovic, Nikita Koshkin and Atanas Ourkouzounov.
I wonder if twenty years ago Vidovic was so savvy in her repertoire selection that her technique, whatever her limits as an interpreter, let the repertoire she chose earlier in her career do most of the work. I'd be hard pressed to complain about Bach or even Walton. Her Bach was often regarded as too fast and yet I could hear Hahn play Bach that fast on the violin and have it work brilliantly ... but then Hilary Hahn has commissioned way, way more new pieces of music for violin than Vidovic has commissioned new works for guitar that I'm aware of. Hahn kept pushing the technical boundaries of what she could do to the point where she was tackling Ives and Schoenberg where, by contrast, Vidovic seems to have leaned harder and harder into the warhorse repertoire that, honestly, has been played perfectly well before her so that her takes haven't stuck with me.
And unlike, say, Xuefei Yang, Vidovic hasn't branched out into east meets west style chamber music experiments by juxtaposing Dowland and Britten songs with transcriptions of traditional music from China.
Which gets me thinking that Yang played that Stephen Funk Pearson piece "South China Sea Peace" and has approached composers to write for her. call it a composer's bias but I have gotten the idea that the stature of guitarists as performers is often pretty intimately linked not just to how well they play but which composers of their time and place they approach with the idea of commissioning new works. We already KNOW why Segovia and Bream are titans and not just for what they played but who they asked to write music for them.
However light and trifling some of Dyens music can seem he still wrote music. We live in an era where technically proficient performers probably aren't doing enough to become memorable guitarists in an era with the living composers I've mentioned. Dyens wasn't a Brouwer or a Gilardino, by far, but he wrote his own music and I like to listen to some of it from time to time.
Yes, one of the most impressive things about Julian Bream's career was the great amount of very high quality music he inspired composers to write for him. In that aspect he rather outshone John Williams.
and, for my aesthetic tastes, Segovia.
I'm beginning to suspect classical guitar is an unusually difficult instrument to play. (Only Pepe Romero can play it.) Orchestral string players of course have only one hand on the strings outside of pizzicato. Keyboard players have both hands in a maximally regular position symmetrically in front of them. Classical guitar is a bulky box where one arm/hand comes under the strings and the other goes over it. On top of it with its dry attack it is as cruelly exposed as a xylophone. Maybe there is a reason guitar was used by strummers or with plectrum.
When people have asked me how difficult the guitar (or any other instrument) is to play I usually answer that it is not the instrument that is difficult or easy, it is the repertoire. If you are rhythm guitar in a reggae band, you have an easy job! If however you are a classical guitarist with a repertoire of difficult virtuoso music--often difficult because written by pianist composers--including a host of awkward transcriptions from other instruments, particularly the piano and lute, then you will have a hard row to hoe.
There are some pieces in the repertoire that remain mysteries until some artist discovers the secret of how to play them. A good example is the Passacaglia from the Three Spanish Pieces by Rodrigo. Segovia performed the first movement, the Fandango, and so everyone had a model of how to approach it. Other guitarists like Alirio Diaz and John Williams solidified the basic interpretive approach so we had some good examples to follow. The last movement, the Zapateado, is pretty much a virtuoso showpiece, so not interpretively difficult. But no-one knew what to do with the middle movement, the Passacaglia. So it was almost never played. Then Bream recorded it and showed us all what to do. He slowed the tempo down from the marking in the score and unveiled its expressive depths. Since then, lots of people have played it, usually following Bream's example.
The Danza movement of the Suite Castellana is another example. Segovia never recorded it. A very young John Williams recorded it, but it was a bare-bones reading, nothing more. Then Pepe Romero recorded the whole suite and the Danza was a real revelation, lyric, expressive and making complete musical sense. This is actually one of the exciting things about being a guitarist. So much of the repertoire is so new that a performer can actually come up with new, innovative interpretive approaches. I doubt you can do that with Chopin on the piano...
Very nice and informative response. Yes transcriptions are not frowned upon for guitar/lute so it does freshen the repertoire. However your point about composers making life difficult writing classical guitar in keyboard style illustrates my point too. (The harp is another instrument often wrongly written in keyboard style.) In listening to even average orchestral players, one is struck by the ease with which they play all but the extreme passages. Double bass is a slight exception because of its size and position of the arms around the instrument. Simply moving the hands and fingers over large distances creates a slight sense of strain in the playing.
Playing guitar with a plectrum even with chords sounds much less effortful than with coordinated L/R fingers picking out melody and accompaniment. So don't sell yourself short. There is a difference in playing notes accurately and playing them with no sense of strain. I just perceive that as more difficult for the classical guitar.
Your implied point about non soloist composers writing outside of normal technique and thereby enlarging technique is well taken. But again I see this as working less well for guitar and harp which I suppose is another reason for transcriptions. The harp is a good example since at least many composers have written for it. The vast majority though are hackneyed, simplistic or awkward much more so than other orchestral instruments. Debussy's Danse Sacree et Profane is probably the best of them even though there is nothing startling about the harp part. Just my thoughts as a non-guitarist. Again thanks for your response.
I haven't written for the harp, but composer friends of mine say it is very difficult writing idiomatic harp parts.
It is possible to play the guitar with real ease, but very few seem to get to that point. Alvaro Pierri is one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7eYis1yF-A
Thanks for the guitarist mention - I never heard of him. Yes he does have an easy hand, quite lovely. However he plays very gently not in the popular bravura style. Did that limit his general concert appeal? I only see a few CDs for him and nothing on Bachtrack.
As for the harp, yes it is the most underused and misused standard orchestral instrument. It is incredibly versatile which makes it all the more regrettable. There was even a jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby. As I mentioned elsewhere I wish composers would use it as an accompaniment for violin, cello and viola sonatas rather than piano. Highly chromatic music though might require two harps.
Alvaro Pierri is from Uruguay, a student of Abel Carlevaro. He was based for a long time in Montreal, but now apparently is professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He can certainly play virtuoso music, but yes, instead of giving the most bravura performances he goes for the lyrical instead. Not a huge career, but a fine player with a very relaxed style.
I had a good friend who was a very fine harpist and we shared an interesting recital together once.
Wonderful thread ... actually all the posts and comments are wonderful ... onward: 1. Maury I like your analogy of the xylophone with the guitar ...yes, the fingers are very much like mallets though not lowered with the direct plonk (that twist of the wrist you also mention) 2. Bryan ... I like your distinction about difficulty on the guitar. It's the repertoire ... yes, that is a good way to address the guitar difficulty though I do think the guitar presents a few barriers to entry: learning to hold it, learning to coordinate the pluck and the press of fingers; there are few guitar prodigies when you think about it. Prodigies flourish on instruments that give back quick reactions to children (piano, drums, don't ask me about the violin, that's where my theory breaks up). Which leads me back to my pet bugaboo about our admired guitar concertizers: transcribing horribly complex music for solo guitar. Such transcriptions turn very able players into second year piano students. Many of the contortions do not allow for the player to give full value to important notes. So the expert player must depend upon the audience to fill in the note from memory of the original scored instrumentation, that is, from the composers original intent! The guitar world is full of this. So what is the point? Expanding the repertoire? Ahem, the way to expand the repertoire is for guitarists to play guitar music written for guitar. Not enough of it? Start bugging your composer friends and don't be afraid to pay royalties for concerts. I admire Mario Salcito's Goldberg very much but even he can't hide the strain he is under; he really starts to buckle as the variations climb to the higher registers. I almost feel sinful for criticizing him, I admire his attempt so much. But ... anyway ... I'm rambling. 3. Bryan, thank you for the Pierre link. Interesting to hear Julia Florida without the usual heavy(ish) pedal of the D to A; he really accents the melody and what a lovely melody it is.
p.s. Forgot to say hi to Wenatchee ... Seattle guitar player ... hmmn... I wonder if we know each other .... cheers ... for a hint, Wentachee: I studied with Steven Novacek at the Rosewood way back in the day and then later with Patricio Contrerras (still in touch with Patricio, great teacher, player, friend!)
I agree, I agree, I agree!
Yes, Alvaro Pierri is a very musical guitarist.
I think I met Steven Novacek once--he was in a duo with another guitarist?
Yes Bryan, Steven played in a duo with another fine guitarist and teacher, Gary Bissiri - the Novacek Bissiri Duo. They made two great albums before they parted; they transcribed and played an exciting rendition of Bach's French Suite. Now I must qualify my rant about guitar transcriptions; I believe two guitars can do just about anything; sometimes I think two guitars is just about the right mix for any kind of guitar music: blues, folk, classical, whatever. I have my doubts sometimes if the solo guitar is even a virtuostic instrument. Can it be played without mistakes? The piano seems designed for miracles. The violin screeches (or sings) out of all proportion to its size (like a cicada). I've seen many dozens of classical and electric guitar 'shredders' (that is super fast players), on YouTube; problem is, the fast scales or riffs are not all that attractive; a simple saxophone solo on a jazz recording, with its luster and sexiness, can blow away (ha!) a guitar solo every time. This might have to do with the layout and tuning of the guitar fret board and strings, that is, the intrinsic design. I don't know, except I'm getting out of my depth ... cheers ....
Hi Dex.
We may have run into each other at a guitar recital or an SCGS open mic. I don't know if I met Steve but I met Bill (Rosewood) and I met Graham Banfield and Michael Partington at Rosewood, and also Matthew and Jason.
I studied with Hilary Field back in the 1990s, whose currently secretary of the SCGS and have contributed pieces to Guitar Soundings. Jessica Papkoff and I have talked about playing a sonata for French horn and guitar I wrote but the circumstances have not been propitious for us the last few years. That pretty much lets you know who I am right there. Review of the Koshkin and Ourkouzounov releases just run in latest issue.
So we might have met or we might not but, either way, howdy.
I may have ... some time on my hands ... to blog about Gilardino sonatas while we're in lockdown, that and more Matiegka.
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