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George Joseph

SIDE 1

Brindle

El Polifemo de Oro (ami 6:50)

(Four Fragments tor Guitar)

Britten

Nocturnal, Op. 70 (ascap 18:41)

SIDE 2

Martin Quatre piéces bréves (ascap 9:58)

(Prélude - Air Plainte » Comme une gigue)

~ Henze Drei Tentos (BMI 6:18)

(from “Kammermusik 1958”)

Villa-Lobos Etude No. 5 in C (emi 2:08) Etude No. 7 in E (emi3:50)

Other RCA Victor recordings by Julian Bream you will enjoy: 3 Lute Music from the Royalseurts of Europes. acu) ee LM/LSC-2924 been: Lute Suites Nos) chet we 6 a ee ae eka oe, LM/LSC-2896 Booaue Guitar a a ee ie LM/LSC-2878 Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra * Vivaldi: Concerto in D for Lute and Strings * Britten: The Courtly Dances from “Gloriana”.................. LM/LSC-2730

© 1967, RCA, New York, N.Y. * Printed in U.S.A.

ream’s favorite ‘modern guitar music

the song unfinished, oblivion and peace. ha

20TH CENTURY GUITAR Mono LM-2964. | os Julian Bream Stereo LSC-2964

The development of the guitar as a virtuoso instrument was due almost entirely to one man—Andrés Segovia. Near the start of the century (he gave his first concert in 1909)

he became associated with the group of artists—including Manuel de Falla and later Federico Garcia Lorca—which was attempting to bring aboui Spain’s artistic emancipa- tion. As with all pioneer virtuosos, Segovia showed a hitherto underrated instrument to

be capable of astonishing new technical and emotional range. New composers were drawn to write for him, and around him grew a new school of virtuoso guitarists. The most distinguished of this second generation is Julian Bream, who was born in London in 1933 and, as well as receiving much encouragement from Segovia, trained at the

Royal College of Music. His special contribution has been to extend the range of musical interest backward as well as forward: He has, as a fine lutenist, transcribed and pre-

sented much neglected Elizabethan and Jacobean music, in addition to inspiring con-

temporary composers to write for him. Britten’s Dowland-based Nocturnal, which Bream

regards as the greatest single work written for the guitar, grows directly out of Bream’s quality as a musician as well as responding to the enormous range of his technique.

Apart from Villa-Lobos’ Etudes, all the works in this recital of Bream’s favorite modern guitar music are in some way mood pieces. The exceptions are the earliest of the com- positions, two of a set of twelve etudes written in 1929 for Segovia, who compared them in their combination of technical dexterity and “disinterested” musical beauty to those of Scarlatti and Chopin. They remain the most advanced studies ever written for the instrument, the work of a composer whose knowledge of the guitar was such that when Segovia came to edit them he found no need to change any of the original fingerings. No. 5 in C is a perpetuum mobile in the middle voice with an independent melodic line in treble and bass. No. 7 in E is not only a iechnical tour de force in scales and arpeg-

gios but accordingly develops greater emotional weight. The Quatre piéces bréves of Frank Martin look forward to the revival of interest in

old music not as an antiquarian study but as a creative source. After the exerciselike Prélude, the Air and Plainte suggest that French courtly dances lie behind their inven- tion; the finale is openly marked Comme une gigue.

None of these works draws upon the superficial Spanish coloring long associated with the guitar —the bolero rhythms and the strumming chords of tourist music. But by 1956, when Reginald Smith Brindle wrote his E/ Polifemo de Oro for Bream, it was pos-

sible once again to recognize the instrument's inherent Spanish qualities, by way of a poem by Lorca (himself at one time a guitarist). Based on a tone-row heard in the opening chords and notes, these fragments—the third with particular intensity—suggest a poetic tribute to Spain by a foreign composer and interpreter. 3

With Henze’s pieces, the tribute is from a German to Italy—more specifically Naples, near where Henze once lived. These interludes are drawn from the Kammermusik,

written in 1958, for tenor, guitar and eight other instruments. The first has a harplike character with an unusually high tessitura that takes in the guitar’s top note. The second is more elaborate and of a stranger conception; the third makes use of a Neapolitan melody of Henze’s.

Britten’s Nocturnal, written at Aldeburgh in 1963, is one of a group of pieces reflect- ing the composer’s preoccupation with sleep and the world of dreams. In his Serenade of 1943, Britten ended with the singer falling asleep; in Nocturne (1958) he undergoes a number of dream experiences, pleasant and terrifying, before waking refreshed to the new day. In 1960 the opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream dramatized how the experiences we undergo in dreams may (as psychology recognizes) help us to wake to new order and peace, and in 1963 came a brief Night Piece for piano and the guitar Nocturnal. The work is a set of variations that instead of departing from a theme works toward it—No. 20 in Dowland’s First Book of Songs or Ayres of Four Parts (1597):

Come, heavy Sleep, the image of true Death, And close up these my weary weeping eyes,

Whose spring of tears doth stop my vital breath, And tears my heart with Sorrow’s sigh-swoll’n cries.

Come and possess my tired thought-worn soul, That living dies, till thou on me be #tole.

But the theme and its previous variations are incomplete. Each mood of night fancy- ings is characterized: the variations are marked Musingly, Very Agitated, Restless, Uneasy, Marchlike, Dreaming, and Gent'y ocking, which leads into ‘a Passacaglia based on the alto part of the original air. V/he 1. this comes, itis like a cc’ 4 resolution of all the busy invention that has: whirled! inpauisitts, but as we di Tk Gow is aw near the close of the tune, it thins out into a single line-and ide 'S irito silence. We:

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PIO Coligress Card Numbers R67-3092 (Mono) and — R67-3093 (Stereo) apply to this recording.

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