Tuesday, 7 March 2000Guitars reign in chamber fest
Brazilian's piece a spectacular sunday finaleBy Jennifer Lee Carrell
On Sunday afternoon, the Seventh Annual Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival opened with unusual but superb fare: a concert by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, popularly known as LAGQ. Quartet members John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant, and Andrew York are some of the most imaginative guitarists around. All four are virtuosos who can play the most intricate and delicate ornamentation with stunning precision; their musicianship also deepens their performances with both a rich, singing clarity and surprising rhythmic mischief. This year’s festival, sponsored by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, has a Latin-American and Spanish theme. As befits the African influence on Brazilian and Caribbean music, LAGQ began with two pieces: Kanengiser’sMbira and York’sDjembe, inspired by the African instruments for which they are named. These, along with Carlos Rafael Rivera’s Afro-Cuban piece titledCumba-Quín, displayed the ensemble’s adventurous streak. In addition to playing their guitars as you might expect, they turn them into percussion instruments, tapping, slapping and drumming strings, front, sides even laying them face down on their knees to play the back.Even though we’re playing guitars, quipped Kanengiser,we’re really frustrated percussionists, and just can’t stop banging on our guitars. The fireworks-finale of the concert was the world premiere of Brazilian Raimundo Penaforte’sQuartetice (For four guitars and ‘obbligato et at libitum’ percussion), commissioned by Arizonans Susan Small, Anne Nelson, Richard and Judy Sanderson, Jean-Paul Bierny and Chris Tanz. The LAGQ might brand themselves closet percussionists, but Penaforte is an unabashed and enthusiastic pro. With a boyish face and long, curly black ponytail, he made his entrance playing the tambourine and a whistle, all the while conducting the audience’s clapping. Penaforte wasn’t kidding when he called theQuartetice atough piece. While the LAGQ played the guitar parts of often fiendish difficulty, the composer himself provided theobbligato et ad libitum (oroptional and improvised) percussion, combining Latin rhythms with the syncopation of American jazz. Some of his instruments tambourine, triangle, maracas, snare drum were familiar. Others including baby rattles, bright-colored toys and his own whispering voice were impishly inventive. The first movement,Prelúdio, was slow and spare, but the three following movements were densely textured.Gangorra swept into melodic lines cascading downward only to slide swiftly back up. “Interlúdio slowed and spread the guitars into a more expansive range. Inspired by a Brazilian street dance that bubbles with brightly colored umbrellas, the final movement,Frevo Barroco was the most song-like, with Penaforte’s jaunty drumming producing toe-tapping in the audience. At times, the drum threatened to overpower the guitars, but it never quite did. Another major anchor of the program was Manuel De Falla’sEl Amor Brujo (orLove the Magician), a sung ballet which tells the story of a gypsy woman haunted by her dead lover. Not until her new suitor tricks the ghost into pursuing another woman is she free to love again. Though inspired by the sounds of the guitar, de Falla originally scored the piece for an orchestra. Kanengiser’s arrangement for the LAGQ brings the music home to the guitar. Soprano Jennifer Foster endowed the part of Candelas with the rich, dark range of her voice, and the LAGQ gave the music a subtly colored, restrained playing. While highlighting the interplay of instruments (as fine chamber music concerts do), this performance lacked the operatic extremes of desperate emotion that ideally fire the piece. Two other highlights York’s Ask the Sphinx and Kanengiser’s Air and Ground demonstrated that these whiz-guitarists are also accomplished composers. The first displayed the very high and very low registers of the guitars, anchoring the higher sounds to the low registers of John Dearman’s seven-string guitar. “Air and Ground began as a neo-baroque play on the old meaning ofair assong, and tumbled forward into the bluegrass sounds of Appalachian banjos. At times, the quartet sounded like 74 musicians rather than just four. Excerpts from this program, with commentary by the musicians and composer, were featured in a special Youth Concert yesterday morning, attended by school children from all over Southern Arizona.
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