A growing repertoire

IN ONE respect guitar recitals are like organ recitals. The audience is usually dominated by enthusiasts for an instrument with a distinctive concert repertoire, largely unknown to the wider public. The organist can call on J.S. Bach, plus several lesser luminaries. The guitarist has no such luck, for until this century the repertoire consisted almost entirely of transcriptions plus the original works of comparatively unimportant player-composers such as Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani.

The second half of Dublin Guitar Week (the first half was reviewed earlier) showed that the guitarist's lot is becoming a happier one. From Wednesday evening to Sunday evening there were seven concerts, four of which included concert pieces composed during the last 60 years or so. Sunday's lunchtime recital at the Hugh Lane Gallery, given by the British guitarist Paul Gregory (the only recital I was unable to attend), demonstrated that the guitar still relies on player-composers, such as the Cuban Leo Brouwer, that much of the new music hails from South America, and that this music is largely indebted to the guitar's folk repertoire.

Are things any different in Europe? On Wednesday night, at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre in Foster Place, the French group Les Quatres Guitares played Impressions de Habanera, by Frenchman Francois Laurent. Although he adopts an art-music harmonic and melodic style, the title says it all. More radical was Gris et Soleil by the Argentine composer Diego Pujol. Les Quatres Guitares showed many of the qualities of good string quartet playing, and their own Philippe Spinosi's transcription of the Farandole from Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite, was an exceptional feat of technical imagination.

Like Pujol, Ireland's Benjamin Dwyer showed an independent approach to composition for gum tar. His Sonata for Flute and Guitar was part of a programme given with flautist Susan Doyle at the National Concert Hall's John Field Room on Friday lunchtime. Doyle's subtle playing helped produce a rewarding recital, which also included another free-thinking piece, Towards the Sea by the Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu.

The Lebanese musicians Joseph Ichkhanian (guitar) and Joseph Atallah, who played the large middle-eastern lute, presented a mix of art-music transcriptions and folk inspired compositions, including their own, at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre on Friday night. Their lack of concern with ensemble was perplexing; but their genial delivery was disarming.

Manolo Franco played at the Rotunda Pillar Room on Saturday night. His dazzling command of flamenco style was one of the high points of the series. Best of all was the persuasiveness and consistent technical and musical excellence of Jose Miguel Moreno, a practitioner and scholar of historical guitar playing. Guitar Week ended at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre with him playing the Classical/Romantic guitar, and presenting in the best possible way the charming but lightweight music of such composers as Sor and Miguel Llobet.

For me, the best conceit of all was on Friday lunchtime at the John Field Room, when Moreno played Spanish music on the Baroque guitar and its Renaissance ancestor, the vihuela. Transcriptions were alive and well then too, but the brilliance of these, of Moreno's playing, and of original compositions by composers such as Mudarra, showed that in Spain at least, that was a golden age for the guitar.