Acoustic Counterpoint

Tanenbaum and the Shanghai Quartet aquit themselves admirably in this collection of contemporary classical pieces for guitar and strings. The acoustic version of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint is - naturally - very different from Pat Metheny's original and makes an interesting companion piece Mats Bergstrom's. Tanenbaum is best - IMHO - in his solo work - a dazzling account of Tippett's "Blue Guitar" and Maxwell Davies' Guitar Sonata... The Roberto Sierra "Tryptich" is a new work to me, and one which I think will grow...

Mike Silverton, the Fanfare reviewer of this disc in 1991 when it was originally published, had unkind words to say about Tanenbaum's interpretation: "The interpretations sound in the main perfunctory. There's a stolidity and want of inflection to Tanenbaum's playing that fast casts its pall. Opportunities for expressiveness in the Tippett and Maxwell Davies particularly go unexplored".I find the comments grossly unfair. It is true that, in Tippett's The Blue Guitar, Tanenbaum is always rhythmically very precise, to a point that I'd call "strict", but it only shows that atmosphere doesn't require to play constant accordion with pulse, as, for instance, Norbert Kraft does on Chandos ( Michael Tippett: The Blue Guitar, Sonata for Solo Guitar / Benjamin Britten: Nocturnal, after John Dowland, Op. 70 / R. Murray Schafer: Le Cri de Merlin - Norbert Kraft, Guitar ). As pianist Arthur Schnabel once said when asked if he was of the school that favored playing in time, or the one that preferred to play according to feeling: "can't one feel in time?" Expressiveness comes not from coaxing the tempi, but from the subtlety and shadings of tonal production, and Tanenbaum's The Blue Guitar is very atmospheric, while remaining very precise, and even strict, in tempo. Furthermore, when it comes to new music, not likely to be very familiar with audiences through repeated listening to a multiplicity of different versions, I think there is a special value in letting the listener hear it exactly as the composer wrote it, and Tanenbaum does exactly that. This is a fine rendition of The Blue Guitar - and, incidentally, the first recording to play it in the order originally conceived by Tippett, e.g. with the fast movement, "Juggling", in the middle, rather than, as its commissioner Julian Bream had performed it and as originally published, at the end.Tanenbaum is also the premiere recording on acoustic guitars of the piece originally written by Steven Reich for Pat Metheny's electric guitars in 1987, "Electric Counterpoint" (here punningly redubbed "Acoustic Counterpoint" and giving its title to the disc) which has the guitarist overdubbing himself as much as twelve times and playing the thirteenth part live against the pre-recorded mixed tape (Metheny's recording is here,  Reich: Different Trains, Electric Counterpoint / Kronos Quartet, Pat Metheny ). The curmudgeon Mike Silverton must have eaten something rotten the day he wrote that review, because he didn't have pleasant things to say either about Tanenbaum's playing the piece on acoustic guitars: "I hear Metheny's as the more seductive version, as well as the more appropriate" said Silverton, adding that "The "acoustic" of Acoustic Counterpoint raises a nice point: I take the word to suggest music-making that happens pretty much as one would hear it (takes and continuity aside) in a concert-hall setting, which is not the case here, nor could it be".But the very premise is absurd. "Acoustic" means no more "as heard in the concert hall" than "electric" would mean "heard on a sound recording only". "Acoustic" means quite simply played on acoustic guitars and "electric", played on electric guitars - and both can be played live, either with solo guitarist playing over tape, or, as has often been the case with the original version, by a guitar ensemble and no tape. I find Tanenbaum's version for acoustic guitars perfectly valid, its relative dryness compared to the original version bringing a welcome freshness to it, more Crosby-Stills-Nash-and-Young than Hendrix, and in the slow movement, the intertwining of the acoustic guitars evokes, more immediately and evidently than with the electric ones, the African Kora - which is, after all, one of Reich's sources. The dynamic and corruscating music of Reich remains as entertaining and exciting on acoustic as on electric guitars..The three remaining pieces, Peter Maxwell Davies' Sonata, Roberto Sierra's Tiptico and Toru Takemitsu's All In Twilight, are said to be recording premieres. It is certainly true with Sierra's piece, since it is a commission and premiere by Tanenbaum himself. It may be also the case with Takemitsu's composition: like Tippett's, it is a commission from Julian Bream and was completed in 1987 (say most sources, the CD says 1988), but Bream recorded it only in 1992 for EMI,  Nocturnal . But although the official Maxwell Davies website, Maxopus, lists only Tanenbaum's recording of the Guitar Sonata, the composition was also recorded by Per Dybro Sorensen on Denmark's Paula label in 1990 (says Sorensen's website), so it's a close call with Tanenbaum (the Paula CD is listed here, though not offered at the time of writing:  Guitar Music ). The acoustic guitar can be a wild instrument, especially at the hands of Flamenco players, but it is mostly, like the flute, a gentle and soothing one, whose strains are more meditative than explosive. No wonder then that all the contemporary music gathered here, even by otherwise relatively or very avant-garde composers like Maxwell-Davies and, to a lesser extent, Takemitsu (I'm not otherwise familiar with Sierra's output), should be so easy on the ear. Although he has, like many composers, somewhat mellowed down in the course of the years, since his uncompromising avant-garde starts in the 1960s and 1970s, Maxwell Davies remains a relatively thorny and "unseductive" composer. His Sonata, written in 1984, is an "abstract" piece in which the composers tried to escape all "Spanish" reminiscences (and did), but the moods and atmospheres are mostly meditative and gentle, and even, the timbral qualities of the instrument helping, songful in their abstract and atonal way. Takemitsu's All in Twilight, four pieces for guitar, is also a surprisingly gentle, dreamy and bluesy piece, with the last one sounding almost like a pop ballad.Underpinned by the more forceful string quartet, the middle movement of Roberto Sierra's Triptico is more explosive, in a way reminiscent (but more modern in style) of the dance-movements of Shostakovich's quartets. But even the middle section of that movement, and the two outer movements, even when the mood is nervous and agitated as in the Finale, offer the high-pitched sonorities of the string quartet, conveying mystery, sensuousness and atmosphere rather than, as is often the case in contemporary music, aggressiveness.The TT of 70 minutes is another argument in favor of this excellent CD.