{"id":3168,"date":"2015-12-01T09:02:35","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T17:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2015-12-02T10:37:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T18:37:48","slug":"cd-reviews-looking-in-on-new-zealand-classical-guitar-discs-from-mike-hoganchristopher-hill-john-couch-and-the-nzgq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/cd-reviews-looking-in-on-new-zealand-classical-guitar-discs-from-mike-hoganchristopher-hill-john-couch-and-the-nzgq\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Reviews: Looking In on New Zealand Classical Guitar (Discs from Mike Hogan\/Christopher Hill, John Couch, and the NZGQ)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A CG Online Exclusive<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Blair Jackson<\/strong><\/p>\n

One might not immediately think of New Zealand as being a hotbed of classical guitar activity, but in fact the South Pacific nation and its much larger neighbor, Australia, have long had active CG scenes, with numerous home-grown performers and composers, several guitar societies, scattered festivals, and visits from top international players, etc. (Anybody here who wouldn\u2019t<\/em> love to visit that beautiful, if remote, part of the world?) Among the most prominent NZ guitarists are Christopher Hill and John Couch, who are one-half of the acclaimed New Zealand Guitar Quartet, but also play solo and in various other configurations.<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s Dark to Light<\/a><\/em><\/strong> CD is a solo guitar exploration of pieces by fellow Kiwi Mike Hogan\u2014in fact the release is under composer Hogan\u2019s name, not Hill\u2019s. Hogan has been composing pieces for guitar (solo and ensemble) for 15 years now and has had his works performed by many of the country\u2019s top players.<\/p>\n

\"darktolight\"<\/p>\n

The title of the album says much about the music, as Hogan\u2019s pieces are full of tonal and textural contrasts\u2014dissonant and melodic, spare and full, rhythmically steady and abrupt\/jerky. Whereas a piece such as \u201cReprise 2009\u201d has a lovely natural flow that gives it a certain pastoral gentility, \u201cStudy #5\u201d is marked by short bursts of four- three-, two- and single-note combinations and off-kilter punctuation, all in a heavily reverberant field, where notes seem to decay endlessly until new ones take their place. There\u2019s an effective scale descent late in the piece that ends at a spot where the pretty main melody fragment is developed further, if only briefly, and then it concludes on a more serious turn. Hogan\u2019s album notes mention that \u201cButtress Point\u201d was adapted from a piano study and uses only the top four strings of Christopher\u2019s Simon Marty guitar; indeed it does have more resonant bass tones in its insistent rhythm; a certain dark mystery.<\/p>\n

The centerpiece of the album is Hogan\u2019s impressionist, four-part, 22-minute Matariki Suite (From Dark to Light)<\/em> which was commissioned in 2004 by guitarist Matthew Marshall, and originally consisted of six parts, but was revised and completed in 2013. \u201cMatariki\u201d is a Maori name for the brightest star in the seven-star Pleiades constellation, which was mythologized by native mariners as a mother and her six daughters (it\u2019s called \u201cthe seven sisters\u201d in Western culture). Hogan explains that the suite \u201cfollows the transition from dark to light as the days lengthen,\u201d and each part has a brief conceptual descriptor in the notes\u2014for instance, the vibe of \u201cTapuanuku\u201d (all four parts are named for Matariki\u2019s \u201cdaughters\u201d) is: \u201cThe stars rise, thoughts turn to the past year\u201d; and with just a little imagination it\u2019s easy to hear the first minute of the piece, single notes all, as stars appearing in a dark sky, one by one, before it falls into a lovely melody tinged with darkness and light. \u201cWaita\u201d returns to some of feeling of \u201cStudy No. 5,\u201d with ringing, echoed combinations of notes, contrasting with consonant chordal work and, near the end, some harmonics. \u201cWaipunarangi\u201d is faster-paced, galloping at a good clip, and melodically more conventional than most of the other pieces on the disc, with its faint echoes of Spain and the Baroque. The final \u201cUrurangi\u201d mixes tempos effectively, moving from lovely rhythmic cascades, to a return to the spare beauty of the suite\u2019s opening star-rise, to a final optimistic crescendo and then quiet ending.<\/p>\n

All in all, it\u2019s a fascinating disc that demands repeated listening to reveal its depth. I would have preferred a little less echo overall, though as noted it is often used to good advantage.<\/p>\n

John Couch\u2019s Ask Me Tomorrow<\/em> <\/strong><\/a>couldn\u2019t be more different, serving up a half-dozen contemporary pieces by New Zealanders and Australians\u2014Couch, Campbell Ross, Sally Greenaway, and long-time resident emigr\u00e9s Richard Charlton (born in the UK) and Mari\u00e1n Budo\u0161 (Czechoslovakia)\u2014and three different configurations: Couch solo, Duo Downunder (Couch and violinist Judith Hickel), and the New Zealand Guitar Duo (Couch and Matthew Marshall, mentioned above). It\u2019s a beautiful and varied album from start to finish, tilting heavily toward the melodic and accessible, which isn\u2019t to suggest it\u2019s in any way lacking in depth or passion.<\/p>\n

The opening four-part suite, Campbell Ross\u2019 Sonata 1<\/em>, with Couch solo, is my favorite; indeed I\u2019ve listened to it repeatedly ever since the disc arrived. Ross mentions in the album notes that he was inspired by Mexican composer Manuel Ponce (who wrote numerous pieces for Segovia in the 1920s and \u201930s); indeed, the first section of Ross\u2019s work, \u201cModerato con Movido,\u201d has a catchy repeated figure that is somewhat similar to one in the third movement (\u201cFiesta\u201d) of Ponce\u2019s 1939 Sonatina meridional<\/em>. Ross\u2019s second movement, \u201cLarghetto Sostenuto,\u201d is subtitled \u201cHomage to Franz Schubert\u201d and has a highly lyrical but somewhat melancholic quality. And the following \u201cAndante Solemne\u201d continues the meditative mood, before giving way to the closing \u201cRondo Allegro,\u201d which begins with bright chordal flourishes and contains echoes of the first movement, proceeds through insistent strums, and ends on pretty concluding passage and an \u201cup\u201d ending. It\u2019s a wonderful piece, and at exactly 15 minutes on the recording, it\u2019s easy to imagine it could be a popular concert piece if it got some exposure in the classical guitar community at large.<\/p>\n

\"Couch\"<\/p>\n

Mari\u00e1n Budo\u0161 Linn Linnaeus<\/em> (named after the famous Swedish botanist) presents four movements corresponding to the four seasons, as a violin and guitar duet, with Couch and Judith Hickel as amazingly sympathetic players freely trading melodies and rhythms over the work\u2019s variegated landscape. More often than not it feels as though the violin is driving the piece, with Couch offering a sort of rippling underscore, but then the roles switch, as at the end of the spring movement, where Couch carries the melody as Hickel plays a single high note for 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

Couch\u2019s \u201cAsk Me Tomorrow\u201d is the lone guitar duet (with Marshall), and a lovely piece it is, moving gracefully in and out of a joyful waltz tempo to more solemn spaces during it\u2019s brief (2:43) duration. Then it\u2019s back to solo guitar and more Budo\u0161 on the four-part The Magic Lute (A Minstrel\u2019s Tale)<\/em>, which is perhaps the most challenging work on the entire disc in terms of the technical requirements of the guitar part. It is also the most \u201cmodern\u201d-sounding. Richard Charlton\u2019s \u201cNight Rain in a Tropical Garden\u201d is another powerfully impressionist guitar-violin duet, and the concluding Sally Greenaway pieces for Couch solo, \u201cSin Luz\u201d and \u201cDe la Luz\u201d contrast beautifully, moving from contemplation and sorrow in the former to a sort of quiet affirmation in the latter. A superb CD, beautifully recorded.<\/p>\n

Lastly, while we\u2019re tackling New Zealand guitar CDs, we should at least give a mention to the New Zealand Guitar Quartet\u2019s late 2013 opus (not reviewed in CG<\/em>) The Storm<\/a><\/em><\/strong>. This recording was made before Couch joined, as it features Cheryl Grice, rather than Couch, playing with Christopher Hill, Jane Curry, and Owen Moriarty. The disc features four well-known suites\u2014all of which have been previously recorded many years ago by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet: Bizet\u2019s Carmen Suite<\/em>, Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s Capriccio Espagnol<\/em> (both arranged by the LAGQ\u2019s Bill Kanengiser), Bach\u2019s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6<\/em> (arr. by James Smith), and Peter Warlock\u2019s Capriol Suite<\/em> (arr. by Moriarty). This is not a criticism; the NZGQ play all of them with precision, verve, and personality; they\u2019re definitely not just copying the LAGQ, and it’s nice to have them all on one disc.<\/p>\n

Two of the three shorter remaining tracks are by Wellington (NZ) composers: \u201cThe Storm\u201d is Ka\u2019isa Beech\u2019s aural depiction of a storm at sea, from calm waters to a fierce (but never jarringly dissonant) maelstrom, and back; and Craig Utting wrote \u201cOnslow College Suite (II),\u201d which also features a striking build in its middle section. The third piece, \u201cSarajevo Nights,\u201d by Alnmer Imamovic, was originally written for flute and guitar, but the composer re-tooled it for the NZGQ. It\u2019s an exciting uptempo piece that really shows off the quartet\u2019s skills to the fullest in a more contemporary context\u2014say, isn\u2019t that the riff from The Who\u2019s \u201cPinball Wizard\u201d popping up at various points in the tune? Nice choice!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A CG Online Exclusive By Blair Jackson One might not immediately think of New Zealand as being a hotbed of classical guitar activity, but in fact the South Pacific nation and its much larger neighbor, Australia, have long had active CG scenes, with numerous home-grown performers and composers, several guitar societies, scattered festivals, and visits from top international players, etc. (Anybody here who wouldn\u2019t love to visit that beautiful, if remote, part of the world?) Among the most prominent NZ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Couch.jpg?fit=403%2C403&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}