“Passing Through” – Carlo Domeniconi: Toccata "in Blue"; Raoul Pleskow: Quatrain; Antonio Lauro: Four Waltzes; Peter Sculthorpe: From Kakadu; Howard Rovics: Three Concert Pieces; Hayley Savage: Passing Through; BACH: Prelude, Fugue & Allegro, BWV 998 – Harris Becker, guitar – Rang 4 Productions 884501152815, 57:07 [Distr. by H&B Direct] ***:
Lovely packaging on this artist-produced CD first catches one’s eye. It’s an imaginative Magritte lookalike with a small reproduction in a corner of the abstract artwork on the back of the album. The program of a half dozen mostly contemporary works for guitar plus some Bach is well-chosen and interesting – especially for one appreciating contemporary works for classical guitar. And the sonics are first rate. Three of the works – those by Pleskow, Rovics and Savage – are composed especially for guitarist Becker, who has performed around the world as soloist and chamber musician on both guitar and lute. He also directs the Long Island Guitar Festival and is co-founder of a music festival in Quebec.
I especially like the open Toccata in Blue, which supposedly pays homage to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, without quoting any of it. The piece uses an alternate guitar tuning for a unique modern sound. However, it is tonal, which most of the other contemporary works here are not. I couldn’t get into the rest of them but some listeners might. I did also like the older Lauro walzes, with their Venezuelan folk influences and interesting rhythmic hesitations.
The downfall of the album is the Bach selection. It is a familiar classical guitar piece, adapted from a work the composer wrote for a special lute-stop harpsichord. Every note in a Bach work of this sort most come thru with the lines of the various voices clearly etched. Recordings of the piece by Christopher Parkening on EMI, Eduardo Fernandez on London and Paul Galbraith on Delos achieve this. (The latter is played on an 8-string guitar and is spectacular.) Becker’s does not. Some notes, especially inner voices, are muddled and sometimes missed entirely. The central Fugue is passable, but I’m afraid the Allegro is a disaster, and at about half the tempo of the version by Fernandez.
– John Sunier
