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At the beginning of the 1980s Leo Brouwer decided to give up his dazzling career as a guitarist to devote his time entirely to composition and orchestral conducting. With the passing of the years, however, the vynil discs he recorded for Deutsche Grammaphon, Erato and Egrem have become genuine rarities. And the master classes he has held all over the world - the only other occasions when we can benefit from his lesson as an interpreter - have become less and less frequent (owing to his increasingly pressing commitments).
So this double album - with material from recitals held in 1978 in Havana (Cuba) and Houston (USA) and a concert given with the latin jazz group Irakere - is not only a thrilling project for Frame records; it's also important for keeping alive our memory of Brouwer's guitar playing. It also turned out to be a fairly complicated venture - mainly because of the difficulties of locating the original tapes and the amateur quality of the actual recordings.
While modern technology has accomplished the miraculous feat of imparting fresh vigour to the extraordinary emotional impact of the Brouwer sound and of his interpretations, it was not so successful (unfortunately) at expunging the ferocious coughing fit of an anonymous Texan spectator - who will doubtless be cursed throughout the ages! Nonetheless, we still feel that the artistic and historical importance of this document easily outweighs the odd inconvenience.
In agreement with Brouwer we have devoted the first CD of the album to early music, the second to the 20th century. The final track of each disc contains comments by Brouwer himself on the works recorded - 'readings' that understandably also register the strong emotion of listening to his performances after a gap of some twenty years.
Finally (before leaving space for the translations of Brouwer's notes), we must add that none of this would have been possible without the enthusiasm, intelligence and profound culture of our friend and colleague Miguel Limón.
To him we owe the discovery and preservation of the original tapes. Mil gracias, querido Miguel! Our thanks also to Chucho Valdés, founder and leader of Irakere, and to the heads
of Egrem for their exceptional collaboration.
Copyright © Paolo Paolini
"It's good to recognise in these live recordings of my concerts (made over twenty years ago!) a manner of interpretation that I still constantly try to transmit to my pupils: the cultivation of sound, articulation, pulsation and breathing. That's all, because everything else is written into the score!
In the Renaissance dances drawn from the famous collection made by Chilesotti, the ornamentation is more English and Elizabethan than Italian: for the added modal embellishments, the models are to be sought in composers such as Dowland and Morley.
De Visée is a veritable compendium of Baroque ornamentation (both simple and composed); what is particularly refined is the way the empty beats on the final chords are filled in. The suite is not complete [the Courante and Passacaille are omitted (ed.)], but after all it was certainly not standard practice at the time to perform all the dances. More likely the player went freely from one dance to the other, even repeating them once or twice and adding more and more ornamentation. Listening to the work today I realise that in the bourrée I improvised a genuine double, a typical feature of performance practice at the time.
The Chaconne by Bach has always been a sort of white elephant for all musicians, from violinists to guitarists. But particularly for guitarists, who tend to look on it as the composition in the history of the guitar and the classical repertory.
In actual fact it is an extremely ingenious dance generated from the sarabande (with its characteristic displaced accent on the second beat), along with all its variations. I added my own ornamentation when and where the score allowed it - but certainly not in the theme, which carries within it the inevitability of the composition itself.
A controversial interpretative problem is that of whether one can introduce flexible speeds in the variations. I don't think it's worth going over again - to me such elasticity seems intrinsic and inseparable from the very character of the work. Besides, this whole issue has illustrious precedents (beginning with Frescobaldi's statements on the subject).
Andrés Segovia had such faith in Ponce's talent, that he commissioned him to compose some pastiches. One was in the style of L.S. Weiss (consisting of a whole suite), the other in the - wholly imaginary! - style of Alessandro Scarlatti. Of this latter piece I used to play the Preambulo, Gavota and Corriente. It is a masterly work (the Gavota in particular is a genuine masterpiece and still my favourite) written in a style that bridges the Renaissance and the early Baroque. As the text of the work was not available, like everyone of my generation I transcribed it from a record (the only available source).
Memorias del Cimarron is a free version for solo guitar based on the chamber work of the same title by Hans Werner Henze for baritone, flute, guitar and percussion. In the original version each musician is expected to play a number of different instruments; in this way they form something approaching an orchestra. Cimarron was born of that healthy cultural curiosity (as well as genuine and sincere affection) that many great names of the European avant-garde felt for Cuba and for the political process the island was going through in the 1960s. The work is in various parts (as is the version for guitar, which I played at many concerts). The idiom it uses is rough, atomised, sometimes violent, sometimes mysterious - as was characteristic of the experimental climate of the sixties. Today there is nothing new about all that; but about those experimental timbres that we composers at the time proposed to enrich or modify - well, I showed Henze and other friends that they could be realised on the guitar.
The work is based on a book by the Cuban writer Miguel Barnet. Its subtitle was Novela testimonio, because it recorded the memoirs of a real Cimarron, i.e. a slave who had escaped into the Cuban countryside in his chains - a slave that I myself met when he was 102 or 103 years old. He was called Esteban and with great lucidity he recounted the experiences that inspired Barnet's book (which in turn inspired the piece by Henze).
Villa Lobos's Prelude no. 3 is enriched by the live concert recording made with the latin jazz group Ikarere, which plays in various fragments of the work. The central section is an improvisation that reminds me of many of my works of the avant-garde period, which are quite close to certain moments of the Cimarron piece heard before. The parts for the two flutes I composed in a very delicate chamber spirit, taking advantage of the collaboration of two great players, Paquito D'Rivera and Averoff - Averoff was a pupil of mine (along with Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes and others) at the courses organised by the Cuban Institute of Cinematography (ICAIC).
Of the Romance anonimo there is not much to be said. It's better to listen to the sort of bossa nova that arises out of the theme, which is used as a pretext for the improvisation that develops in the middle of the piece. Note also the electric guitar of Carlos Emilio, guitarist of Irakere.
The fool on the hill is one of the many Beatles classics. This version for two guitars is one I made to perform with John Williams, along with two other pieces, at the Festival of Martinique. It was a great success, and a delightful musical moment. In the recording made here I played the first part live over a pre-recorded base I had made earlier.
Love is blue was a very fashionable song in its day: certain almost Elizabethan qualities (the hints of Greensleeves and other Renaissance tunes) were the point of departure for this guitar arrangement. The result was a short, light piece - very suitable as an encore at the end of a demanding programme.
The theme of one of Joplin's rags (The entertainer) later became famous as part of the soundtrack of a phenomenally successful film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Ragtime, son cubano, tango argentino, etc. are all culturally related; they are all 'half-caste' music - i.e. the result of an encounter that mixed African roots with those of the colonizing Europeans: in Argentina with Italian song, in the United States with English culture, in Cuba with that of Spain... Nearly always these dances are in rondo form, which was particularly dear to folk music. As I've already said elsewhere, I like to transform any work that uses folk music into a kind of re-composition: in it the introductions, bridges and counterpoints are the elements I use to raise the level of the accompaniment and make it worthy of works so brilliantly conceived and composed.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra is the fundamental guitar-tremolo work: in fact it's so famous that certain virtuosi also play it in transcriptions for the violin and other instruments. It is one of Tarrega's classic pieces and an obligatory composition for all guitarists who receive professional instruction."
Copyright © Leo Brouwer
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