TOM KERSTENS, Guitarra - HOLANDA - INGLATERRA

Guitars used:

Torres ca 1888 copy made by Gary Southwell, Nottingham, 1992 (Manuel Granados) and Antonio Marin Montero, Granada 1990.

Domingo 5 de Agosto de 2007

Hora: 21:30 H.

Casa de Cultura, Aranda de Duero

Entrada libre

NOTAS AL PROGRAMA

    Leo Brouwer (b 1939, Cuba) is the foremost guitarist/composer of our time; he stands in a long tradition of composing guitarists stretching from Gaspar Sanz and Francisco Corbetta via Mauro Guiliani, Fernando Sor, Napoleon Coste and Johann Kaspar Mertz to Francisco Tárrega and Miguel Llobet. He is also a highly successful conductor having been the music director of the Cordoba Orchestra for many years and his guest appearances with leading orchestras have included the Berlin Philharmonic.

    As a composer he has gone through many changes from Latin American folk music inspired works to serial avant-garde and post minimalist accessibility.

    Paisaje cubano con Tristeza is the latest in a group of works called Cuban landscape, both for guitar solo and guitar ensemble. This one is a short, sad work in four sections with an improvised ‘cadenza furiosa’ after the fourth section, followed by a recap of the first. It is dedicated to ‘el bloqueo a Cuba; por los guerras y por la muerta innecessaria’ (against the blockade of Cuba, war and unnecessary death).

Alongside his serious compositions Brouwer has always continued to produce attractive and effective dance miniatures and Danza del Altiplano is an excellent example. Melodic material from the Andes alternates with virtuoso episodes demonstrating Brouwer's expert use of the guitar's resources.

    Enrique Granados (1867-1916) is one of Spain’s greatest composers and regarded, alongside Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla, as the most successful  exponent of  Spanish musical nationalism. He was born in Lérida near Barcelona and as a 13 year old started studying the piano with Joan Baptista Pujol who also taught Joaquín Malats (1872-1912) and Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909). The latter was also on the Jury of a piano competition which the young Granados won only 3 years after taking up the instrument. Another Jury member, the influential composer Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922) was so impressed he took the 16 year old on as a harmony and composition student.

    Like so many Spanish composers Granados went to Paris, where he studied the piano with Charles de Bériot (1833-1914) who was renowned for his work on tone production and improvisation. It is there that Granados wrote his first masterpiece, the twelve Danzas Españolas which were published on his return to Barcelona in 1889.

    Without ever using specific folk tunes, the work clearly lives and breathes the atmosphere of Granados’ native country because it so successfully absorbs folk music elements into a highly personal, individual style.

    Two of Goya's best known paintings are La Maja Desnuda (the nude girl) and La Maja Vestida (the clothed girl). They depict the same woman in the same pose, naked and clothed, respectively. La Maja de Goya is one of Granados’ most beautiful songs, taken from his collection of Tonadillas for voice and piano, here presented in a solo guitar version. Granados was not only inspired musically by Goya but also took up painting himself, sometimes successfully copying the works of his favourite painter.

    Like Schumann, Granados had unique access to the soul of the child and following the example of Schumann’s Kinderszenen he wrote a set of delightful miniatures called Cuentos de la Juventud (Tales of Youth) of which Cuento Viejo (Old tale) and Recuerdos de Infancia (Memories of childhood) are presented here.

    Gabriel Jackson was born in Bermuda in 1962. After three years as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral he studied composition at the Royal College of Music, first in the Junior Department with Richard Blackford and later with John Lambert, gaining his B.Mus in 1983. While at the College he was awarded the R.O.Morris Prize for Composition in 1981 and 1983 and in 1981 he also won the Theodore Holland Award. In 1992 he was awarded an Arts Council Bursary.

    His music has been performed and broadcast throughout Europe and the USA and has also been heard, in recent years, in Cape Town, Ho Chi Minh City, Kiev, Kuwait, Sydney, Tokyo and Vancouver. His works have been presented at many festivals in the UK and beyond, including Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, ThreeTwo (in New York), Lek Art 2000 & 2004 (in Culemborg), ppIANISSIMO (in Sofia), Haarlem Choir Biennale, Europa Cantat, Festival Vancouver, Festival ProBaltica, as well as Spitalfields and Meltdown in London. His liturgical pieces are in the repertoires of many of Britain's leading cathedral and collegiate choirs and in 2003 he won the liturgical category at the inaugural British Composer Awards.

    His music is being recorded with increasing frequency with works available on NMC, Metier, Usk, GFR, Lammas, Priory, Telarc, York Ambisonic and the British Music Label; in 2005 a disc devoted to his choral music was released by Delphian Records. Current projects include Kenidjack, for alto saxophone, strings and percussion, instrumental works for guitarist Tom Kerstens, organist Michael Bonaventure and trumpeter Mark O'Keefe and a saxophone quartet for Lunar Sax.

Fantasy with Chorale (and Bells)

    Like many composers I was initially rather daunted by the prospect of writing for the guitar, as its idiosyncrasies are even more intractable than those of another bête noire – the harp. But with encouragement and copious help from the indefatigable Tom Kerstens I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to grips with the instrument and producing, I hope, an idiomatic piece.

    Fantasy with Chorale (and Bells) is has a mosaic structure where a number of varied sections of rapid, mobile material enclose a slow chorale. The bells appear, momentarily, just before the end as a carillon of harmonics.

    Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992 ) was the king of the ‘nueva tango’. He was largely self-taught but also spend some time in Paris studying composition and piano with Nadia Boulanger. He was a highly accomplished bandleader and bandoneonista (a type of accordion or concertina) and for many years his concert tours met with tremendous worldwide success. The ‘nueva tango’ developed out of traditional tango music over a period of time and is characterised by more adventurous rhythms and jazz inspired harmonies. Piazzolla’s music is highly personal, inventive and memorable and almost always sad. ’Milonga del Angel and ‘Verano Porteno’ are two of his most popular pieces, here presented in arrangements for guitar solo.