Thomas Viloteau
Les Productions D’Oz : 15 pages
This French guitarist is widely known and respected in the classical fraternity today and has many compositions and recordings under his belt, as well as a great many other wonderful guitaristic events to his name.
Here is a three – movement work which you can find a performance of on YouTube, should it whet your appetite, and incidentally, what a performance it is. For a true Allegro in every sense of the word, see how our composer performs the final movement!
The opening Prelude is ostensibly in Am but the multitude of accidentals throughout makes you very quickly realise just how different his writing is to most other composers. It is tonal, but in a very unusual way, and so one has to really concentrate throughout to get the form behind the notation. Mostly in semi-quavers that really move around the fingerboard in a constant flow in all directions, often in single notes but sometimes in two voices this movement never lets up from start to finish.
The following Fugue continues in this sound world, and to be fair, is an exceedingly tough piece to get to grips with, owing to its many time signature changes, and a huge variety of rhythmic diversity, that makes an advanced piece in every respect.
The final Allegro, as I stated before is obviously meant to be extremely fast as Viloteau’s performance shows. As a result this semi – quaver based piece is certainly only for the most advanced of players, as indeed a great deal of the foregoing two movements also prove to be.
Add the difficulty factor to the very individual way he harmonises his music here and you end up with a piece of music that won’t please everybody by any means. However if the man’s music is something that you previously admire, then you will no doubt get a great deal from this 10 minute + piece.
Chris Dumigan
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