Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed Saturday 27th November 2010
http://www.adelaideguitarfestival.com.au
http://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Venue: Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: one performance only
Duration: 100mins (incl interval)
Festival Bookings: BASS 131 241 or http://www.bass.net.au
Karin Schaupp divided her concert in half, the first being Australian music, the second more closely relating to the title of the concert. Both halves finished with works featuring the Adelaide Chamber Singers and her special guest for the opening piece in the second half was the renowned Flamenco guitarist, Oscar Guzmán.
She began with Three Guitar Dances, written in 1982 by Ross Edwards as Marimba Dances and transcribed by Adrian Walter in the 1990s. This piece has always been popular with percussionists and seems to work well as a guitar piece, too. There is a lightness and a sense of fun to this piece which tends to draw attention away from its difficulty and Schaupp negotiates its complexity with seeming ease.
Phillip Houghton’s God of the Northern Forest came next, inspired by two images, the Paul Klee painting of that name and the endangered Eltham Copper Butterfly. This work is filled with contrasts, light and shade and evocative passages that Schaupp brings out clearly, exploiting the opportunites in dynamic range that the writing calls for.
The final piece in the first half was Mary Doumany’s The Butterfly and the Phoenix, for guitar, spoken word and choir. It was written in response to the Victorian bushfires of Saturday 7th February, 2009 and has four movements: The Butterfly, Book of Flames, Threnody and The Phoenix. The choir sang non-verbal sounds, accompanying the guitar and as a chorus or backdrop to the spoken word, with the guitar providing both music and dramatic effects. I did find, however, that the spoken word got in the way, somewhat, being particularly clichéd, and some of the things expected of the choir, like the noise of the wind, a touch trite. Nertheless, the execution of the work was excellent.
Following the interval Oscar Guzmán joined her to play a rare gem, a work for duo guitarists, one classical guitarist and one Flamenco guitarist. Raphael Requeni’s Suite Sevilla is in three movements; Zapateado, Puerto de Trinia and Calle del Infierno. With this, the excitement level went up several notches and the audience responded accordingly. The interplay between these two fine guitarists, from different traditions, kept the audience entranced. To compare the playing styles and techniques side by side was a fascinating opportunity, each a master in their own style.
Schaupp then played ‘Asturias’ from the Suite Espanola, Op. 47 by the 19th century pianist and composer, Isaac Albéniz, in her own arrangement for guitar. She infused this with all of the romantic notions that people have of northern Spain and its history.
The final item, for guitar and choir, was Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Romancero Gitano, a suite of seven movements based on the poetry of Garcia Lorca (Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca). This was a stunning finale and gave the singers a chance to show not only their technical skills but also there ability to interpret the powerful emotional core of poetry. The guitar and voices are strongly linked and the relationship between all of the performers was delicately balanced.
This was a wonderful end to this superb concert and the enormous applause was well–deserved.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
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