As an experiment, I listened to this recital’s opening work via conventional two-channel playback, and got no sense of a live guitarist interacting with a prerecorded guitar. Instead, I heard lyrical, non-eventful lines interspersed with percussive tapping, and not much else. Switching to SACD mode, the pre-recorded guitar in the rear speakers provides more palpable spatial contrast to the live performer in front, and suddenly the music’s modest conversational game-plan makes sense.
Frank Crijns’ Raam #2 encompasses impressive textural variety in the form of dissonant chordal flourishes, silences, and repeated notes that morph into bass ostinatos. I’m not sure if looping technology enters into Crystal Vermin’s amplified specifications, yet the complex interplay between the opening section’s steady, rumbling bass lines, high harmonics, and bluesy chords suggests at least two guitarists at work. The music comes to a full stop, followed by a section devoted to repeated chords that break out into fleet, flamenco-like filigree lines. It’s clear throughout that Florian Magnus Maier uses amplification mainly to manipulate sonority and tone color, but rarely to enhance volume for the sake of loudness.
In the same composer’s Toccata, digital delay helps create a rich, almost orchestral canvas of rhythmic interaction and harmonic collusions. Both of Maier’s pieces bustle with invention and refuse to sit still. By contrast, yards of breathing room absorb the delicate repeated-note patterns and shimmering arpeggios in Paul Goodman’s Call, despite my sense that the piece goes on a bit too long for what it expresses.
Guitarist Diangelo Cicilia appears to make the best possible case for these new works. His effortless, fluid technique encompasses an astonishing command of rapid dynamic changes and articulations. His complete mastery of Luciano Berio’s difficult Sequenza XI (the non-Dutch “bonus” track) easily holds its own with other recorded versions. By taking a little more time between sections, Cicilia adds about three minutes to Eliot Fisk’s DG traversal, where closer microphone placement intensifies the impact of Berio’s loud flurries of chords (for a happy medium between Cicilia’s breadth and the analytic detail of DG’s engineering, try Seth Josel in Mode’s recent boxed set devoted to the complete Berio Sequenzas). If you’re into new guitar music, you’ll certainly want to investigate this release.
