Adrian Andrei : Sonatina No2 : Bergmann

Adrian Andrei  : Sonatina No2 : Bergmann

Adrian Andrei

Bergmann: 15 pages

Hungarian – born Andrei has produced many wonderful guitar pieces over the years and I am happy to say that I have quite a number of them. They are always very imaginative, and modern but not too much.

This latest piece which is in three movements is dedicated, tellingly, to Bela Bartok. I say that because he produced this Sonatina after working on arranging Bartok’s Sonatina for Piano, for the guitar. It didn’t come about but knowing how much the Romanian folk songs were and their distinctive harmonies were used by Bartok, he proceeded to write his own using many of the harmonies that one finds in Romanian folk songs as its basis.

The end result is a wonderful, friendly, and not too difficult piece of writing that anyone will enjoy. Incidentally another wonderful set of Bartok pieces using all these folk song scales can be found in his For Children set, which again a lot of this Sonatina does sound like.

The first movement is an Allegretto largely in semi – quavers and mostly in two voices and in three keys, A, Am, Em and finally back to A Major for its coda.

The second movement is short, and on one page, and is a Lento  in 3/8 which begins very sparsely in three voices before shorter notes enter and the piece then becomes two voices only right up to the coda..Again it is very melodic, with one or two small crunches just to add a bit of surprise to the movement.

The final movement is an Allegro in A Major in 2/4 with again a good deal of the Romanian scale sound. It is in 2 and sometimes 3 voices with a momentum that continues right through the movement, before ending on a final E Major bare fifth.

This is a work of intermediate difficulty only, and full of interesting moments that keep your attention throughout, and I can heartily recommend it for any lovers of these folk scales, or indeed the music of Adrian Andrei, a composer who never disappoints

Chris Dumigan