Aureo Puerta Carreno
Les Productions D’Oz : Score and separate parts ( 20, 5, 5, 6, and 6 pages respectively)
Here is another in the Guitar Foundation of America Spotlight series and although this is one piece for 4 guitars is apparently part of a larger suite in four movements, and was commissioned by the GFA for a particular quartet of guitarists whose performance you can find on YouTube.
And what a performance it is! This piece is definitely not for the lesser talented players amongst you, and really is extremely technical all the way through, but the music itself is full of Latin rhythms and melodies and is great fun throughout .Incidentally there is a Preface where various percussive effects, written into the score, that imitate five different percussion instruments are explained how to be achieved.
It begins with guitars 2, 3, and 4 imitating three of the afore – mentioned percussive instruments for 24 bars before guitar 1 enters with what begins as a rhythmic bass/chords idea, but that then turns into the melody shortly afterwards. It is only at bar 69 that the other guitars actually start playing musical notes (apart from one and a half bars earlier on, on guitar 2).However when all four do start playing, things really start to take off, with plenty of cross – rhythms, and extremely fast runs until an Allegro at 142 beats a minute enters to notch the difficulty factor up even further. The music is however very addictive, lots of wonderful chord progressions and catchy melodies and all four players really having a great deal to do. After a number of sections that continue in this vein, the coda builds to a considerable climax, ending with a brief resume of the percussive idea, and two bars of rasgueado to close.
The best way to find out about this piece is to watch the Y9ouTube video I mentioned earlier. It gives any interested quartet of players a really good idea of just a) how good the piece is, and b) how really difficult it would be to get your fingers around it. That said, any really good players would have a wonderful time with this outstanding piece of writing.
Chris Dumigan
Comments