NCH John Field Room, Dublin
Albéniz — Granada.
Segovia — Estudio sin luz.
Soler — 3 Pieces.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco — Fantasia Op 145.
Albéniz — Evocación.
Granados — Andaluza.
Haug — Fantasia.
Classical guitar and piano! Now, there’s a combination you won’t hear often. In fact, last Friday’s lunchtime recital by Stephen Reck (guitar) and Gina Kruger (piano) was the first for this combination that I’d ever attended.
If you’ve got an interest in the minor works of great composers, you may well have come across some pieces by Beethoven for the combination of mandolin and fortepiano. But that’s a different matter altogether. The two instruments are a better sonic match than a modern guitar and piano, and the mandolin’s strumming technique means that its notes can be sustained while the notes from the keyboard die away.
Reck and Kruger offered a mixed programme featuring solos for guitar by Albéniz (the inevitable arrangement of Granada, originally a piano piece) and Segovia, solos for piano by Albéniz and Granada (in a style influenced by the guitar), and pieces for guitar and piano – movements arranged from Soler’s 18th-century concertos for two organs, and original 20th-century works by Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Swiss composer Hans Haug.
The Soler served to highlight the extremity of the challenges involved. Although the piano sound was contained by having the lid barely open and the guitar was amplified, the mismatch between the instruments was so extreme that the guitar struggled to be heard.
It was fascinating, then, to see how the composers of the two original guitar and piano duos set about solving the problems of balance.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Fantasia of 1953 tried to keep the instruments working in areas of their registers where they could, as it were, avoid getting in each other’s way, or, rather, where the piano could play without drowning out the guitar.
Haug’s Fantasia of 1957 took an entirely different approach. He used a flamenco-styled opening to allow the instruments to function together through rapid alternations, the guitar’s energetic chords sounding clearly in the gaps between the piano’s contributions. The performances were nicely-turned in a mild-mannered way.
