String masters

Recitals by two Spaniards brought Dublin Guitar Week to the rousing conclusion it had promised, writes Douglas Sealy

As in previous years, the performers at the annual Dublin Guitar Week festival came from far and near, from Uruguay to Ireland. It was not possible for me to attend all of the nine recitals on offer, but I did hear a stimulating variety of musical styles and traditions which showed a welcome catholicity of repertoire.

Most of the works performed were originally written for guitar, but there were some of the inevitable, if none the less welcome, arrangements by J. S. Bach. Some unusual arrangements of Mozart, Ohana, Dufour and Satie were presented by Pierre Laniau, who plays a 10-string guitar; this enables him to avoid transpositions, and opens unexpected possibilities. Ohana's Planh and Aube sounded particularly pungent and Satie's La diva de l'empire had a cheeky charm. The Andante arrangement from Mozart was less successful.

Christoph Jäggin, who started his recital with Bach's Lute Suite BWV 995, moved into a strange territory with Suilamo's Eidola - weiland Gitarrenspieler (Apparitions - formerly guitar players). In this piece, as in the other works from the late 1990s by Weissberg and Neidhöfer, the silences were as important as the notes, if not more so; the notes, or sounds, gave the impression of being plucked at random from the teeming air.

Less intellectually taxing was the recital by Lorenzo Micheli of works by Giuliani, Barrios and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Of particular interest was a set of Variations on Folias de Espana by Miguel Llobet, with a dazzling variation for left hand only. The Cavatina or Suite by Tansman, written for Segovia in 1951, rejuvenated the baroque set of movements and a fifth movement, a danza pomposa, was added at Segovia's request. This may have made the neo-classicism of the first four that much more acceptable to the great guitarist.

The last two recitals of the week were given by Spaniards and one did feel closer to the central tradition. Paco Javier Jimeno, in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, playing the flamenco guitar, brought to his improvisations an inexhaustible fund of invention; without breaking out of the flamenco style, he found all the freedom he needed to expand his themes. He combined a public delivery with a private inspiration in a most communicative way; this contrasted with the other guitarists in whose recitals the studious attention lavished on the pieces could come between them and the audience. What one might call his super-charged folk music received a rapturous response.

José Luis del Puerto, in St Ann's Church, made good use of the favourable acoustic, producing the sweetest tone of any. Celebrating the 150th aniversary of Tárrega's birth he played Twelve Preludes by that composer, but the real meat of the recital was in other items: three extended Preludes in homage to Tárrega by Roncera, Costa and Prieto; a Homage to the Guitar by Sainz de la Maza and Sonata of fire by Tomáz Marco. This last had four movements; some interesting sonic effects struck the attention but did not distract from the progress of the music, which was clearly constructed in a way that would have been recognised by the old vihuelistas. They might have appreciated it a bit more than the comparatively anodyne Tárrega, but both would have admired the playing of José Luis de Puerto.