Bryan Johanson
Les Productions D’Oz : 26 pages
Bryan Johanson is well known in the guitar fraternity, as a performer an author, and a composer, many of which are published here at Les Productions D’Oz.
His fifth Sonata for the guitar is a large three movement work that is advanced in every way, both in the technique required and in the harmony world it occupies. The opening movement is a Allegro Vivace , ma non troppo that is keyless, owing probably to the multitude of accidentals needed to play it. It spends quite a lot of time from the opening bars, doing a rhythm of two semi – quavers and a quaver, with the semi – quavers being pull – offs, followed by a chord that is most often a ‘crunch’ chord where part of it is a dissonance .This then varies after a time, and includes many moments of running up the fingerboard sometimes turning into an arpeggio that goes up and down the strings before carrying on in the same vein, but with varied harmonies. This continues for a considerable time, amounting to over 10 pages of continuous movement that really does need an advanced player to do it full justice.
The 2nd Movement Meditativo begins with a melody in artificial harmonics for the first 18 bars, before becoming a multi – faceted piece with several different sections, firstly a waltz – like idea, that swiftly turns into a pizzicato solo line of 24 bars. After this a section in three main voices turns into one with a number of time signatures, again all in three voices. This then gathers momentum, and becomes a running semi – quaver idea before finally returning to the waltz – like theme, now varied , which then calms down to become the coda that finishes on a run up the fingerboard, and a final harmonic A.
The final Presto Agitato, sempre con fuoco is a constant extremely fast 10 page piece in semi – quavers throughout .Add to this the time signature changes and the many difficulties this movement has and you really do need to be a superb player to get this to sound like it should. There is no let up at the coda and everything comes to a loud and insistent finish.
Bryan Johanson has written quite a challenging piece here, very musically involved, in its own harmonic world that sounds like no one else, and of a size and difficulty that will be beyond a lot of guitarists’ capabilities, but you may have seen and heard much of this man’s writings before, and know what to expect. If that is so, this might suit you admirably.
Chris Dumigan
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