Lincoln Brady
Bergmann Edition: 18 pages
A few pieces have now come my way from Australian guitarist/composer Lincoln Brady, and here we get six Preludes quite different from each other, and each with its own title as a help when performing them.
Preludio Con Amore is a Cantabile piece of arpeggiated 6/8 writing where the melody moves around via some harmonies, that are perfectly normal but follow on from one another in a slightly unexpected pattern, which gives the piece a certain individual feel, that I have found in his music before, and so we get a G Maj7, followed by a D7, a BbMaj7, an Fmaj7, a Cm6, a D7 finishing the phrase with a G Maj7, again. So one finds the key of G, often has plenty of flats around. The main theme enters twice and then the second time finishes in a completely different way before moving to the coda that closes quietly in G. The moving around of the arpeggios does make this a little tricky until you get used to his style of writing, but that’s not a criticism, just an observation.
Preludio Misterioso is a 12/16 piece in consistent semi – quavers until the final 3 bars, when longer notes intervene. Again the sound created is one of gently dissonant arpeggios, that climb up and down in groups of three, with the result being one of gentle clashes as they proceed, hence the ‘misterioso’ part of the title. At the speed of 140 crotchets a minute, these patterns move quite fast, so care has to be taken exactly where you place the notes as the l.v. quality of the groups have to be constantly kept up.
Preludio Molto Ritmico is and Energico 135 crotchets a minute affair, full of offbeat accents and rhythms and this time more dissonant clashes every so often to keep you on your toes when playing .Its 3 voices style makes some of this hard to get your fingers around for a few plays but then everything falls into place nicely, especially with all the careful fingering that is constantly around
Preludio Notturno is marked Tranquillo e Rubato and is full of mysterious and rather unnerving chords and little phrases that produce the ‘night’ sounds here. This moves around the fingerboard quite a bit, albeit at a slow pace of 75 crotchets a minute, and is one of the shortish in the set of 6.
Preludio Romantico is again marked Rubato although here the speed changes a few times and generally consists of a melody that is sometimes at the top, with gentle harmonies underneath, or occasionally the opposite where the melody comes in lower down with harmonies above
The final Preludio Vivo is one of the hardest as it involves a phrase that is rather unusual and which keeps the player constantly moving and always on his/her toes due to the semi – quavers pattern that dodges around through various keys and positions on the fingerboard.
Altogether this is an interesting set of slightly unusual pieces , most of which will not remind you of anything you may have seen before and all of which should provide the interested player with some modern but very acceptable pieces to try out.
Chris Dumigan
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