Renaud Cote- Giguere
Les Productions D’Oz: 4 pages
This Canadian guitarist writes in a style that is completely his own, tonal but also somewhat elusive so that nothing happens as you might expect , and also the usual guitaristic figurations are often absent to be replaced by a style of writing that is like nothing you might have seen before.
The cover incidentally is wonderfully eye – catching with a dancer in twilight in full flight whilst on a small set of stones in the middle of a river or a stream, and is a lovely picture which is the work of Florence Lemay.
The Arabesque starts slowly with a melody atop some descending harmonies, wherein the key is immediately enigmatic in its harmonic flow. After a brief time the opening repeats but this time adorned with sextuplet semi – quaver runs that then go straight into a doloroso section marked slightly slower, but yet are still full of the sextuplets, so one doesn’t feel the music to have a slow pulse at all. The broken chords made up from the sextuplets are unusual but tonal throughout, so fingerings are not what you might be expecting when you play this section. After a brief climax a new animato section in 7/8 and 6/8 takes over, in two main voices that are in constant cross over with each other, the rhythms therein being complex and definitely not for the sight – reader to attempt! The main theme is high up the fingerboard almost throughout this section, and so again, the fingerings needed have to be carefully considered. A sudden slowing down takes one back to the very opening, where the music relaxes and comes to a quiet ending.
This is not music for anyone but the advanced player and the unusual world it occupies is not for everyone, but as a piece of guitar writing that you will not have witnessed the like of before, it is outstanding
Chris Dumigan
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