Claudio Camisassa
Les Productions D’Oz: 24 pages
Here is a set of twelve varied pieces ,’ tailored’ ( as per the title ) to the musical needs of some of the composer’s friends and relations .They range from moderately easy to moderately difficult in the book, and are graded with increasing difficulty as the book progresses
Balada Nostalgica is a delightful arpeggio – driven piece that moves around very melodically and is a fine start to the set.
Prelude a Juliette is a Liberamente piece in three with some surprising but beautiful harmonic moves and an engaging melody
Con Un Poco de Swing moves quickly and as the title suggests has elements of swing the instruction to make the straight quavers into the triplet swing rhythm, and is fun to play.
Chanson pour Sophie is surprisingly an extremely fast three in the bar with usually chords on beat one and the rest of the bar being taken up with the melody and is a lovely little piece.
Valse Ingenue is even faster at 176 beats a minute and like so many of the other pieces, is never obvious in its musical content but rather has several moments when you don’t get what you expect you might do, always the sign of a good composer!
Lettre Intime is a romantic and sad little piece, and by now the pieces are becoming a fair bit harder than the opening 2 or 3.This waltz has lots of harmonic variety and a relatively modest pace of 80 beats a minute, with a Liberamente instruction, leaving the player with plenty of space to ‘feel’ the piece.
Sourire d’Enfant is humorous and delightful in its quirkiness, and is apparently an adaptation of a work of his originally for 4 guitars. This again is a lovely work full of character.
Valsecito para Hugo is a Venezuelan waltz in all but name with the almost standard opening of the first 5 notes being the dominant note ( B), followed by an A#, another B, a C , and final B all in quavers. After that the composer makes this piece his own, with a number of different harmonic touches that stop it sounding like a carbon copy of a Lauro waltz.
La Mazurka de Thomas is by now quite a difficult piece, as it leaps around the fingerboard constantly with plenty of very swift slides that you have little time to think about. An extended passage beyond fret 12 adds to this difficulty factor, but in the end this is yet another fun piece, and extremely melodic.
Folksong for Julia is almost all in semi – quavers with a number of features, including the part – writing and the manner in which the melody and harmonies are spread over the constant semi – quavers, that make this quite a handful, beautiful though it is.
Floreo de Milonga is in a recognizable 2/4 Milonga style with lots of exciting parts and many places of melodic inventiveness.
The final Blues de Julien is again marked for the straight written quavers to be swung in triplets, and is by far the hardest piece in the book, and there are a number of places where you are taken completely by surprise with the manner in which it is written. That said it is a fine piece that will give the moderately advanced player, plenty to work at
So in summation, this is a hugely varied bunch of pieces, every one of them a delight to play, and full of harmonic invention and lovely melodies, and is definitely a set to get to know.
Chris Dumigan
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