Steve Margoshes wrote
the music for ‘Fame’ and has recorded
selections from it before – in orchestral
garb and in versions for violin. Here
he plies a more domestic course and
accompanies Saw Maestro Dale Struckenbruck
in their duo, Dale and Steve, rather
better a name than Struckenbruck and
Margoshes, which sounds like a corporate
law firm. The musical saw has had its
place on the boards, in Music Hall and
Variety, and has even inspired such
as Henri Longuet to compose seriously
for it. Not that these pieces aren’t
exactly serious but the saw, played
sitting, and with a bow with the pitch
controlled via bending the blade, lacks
the ethereal outer-spacery of the theremin
but is a definite advance on the spoons,
which are altogether too rhythmic or
gutturally vertical (though I did once
hear a Leicester Square busker who was
a veritable Heifetz of the spoons).
Between the kazoo and
the swanee whistle lies the Serengeti
of musical paraphernalia in which the
musical saw takes its prominent place.
Here it rises to Romantic heights (the
first movement of the Neapolitan Serenade
for instance) with a fervour that quivers
with metallic intensity. The duo even
manage to invest the music with romanticised
gesture – where the rallentandi in "The
Dream" Theme are apt and wavery
with import. In October Song composer
Margoshes threatens a Bachian Fugue
– and cultivates other devices as registral
leaps (fine left hand blade bending
from Struckenbruck) and a kind of Mischa
Elmanesque long bow. This is a devil
of a thing to achieve on the saw but
maybe he’s been listening to long-bow
experts such as violinist Adolf Busch
in his quest to produce an unquavering
line (it’s true he’s not entirely successful
but the quiver is more a squall than
an Irish Sea vomit inducer).
Still that’s the lure
and peril of the musical saw; the pathos,
the queasy intonation, the slapstick,
the silent variety stage where comics
once plied their trade. It’s a pity
that the final track, Bring On Tomorrow
sounded so awkward; it made me want
to Call Back Yesterday. Still, the disc
comes obviously with the composer-performer’s
imprimatur (fine piano playing from
Margoshes in Procession For Two). My
only aside is technical. What is the
occasional shuddering squeak to be heard
amidst the legato wail of the saw? Is
this a chink in Struckenbruck’s technical
armoury? Is this a component feature
of blade bowing? I think we should be
told.
Jonathan Woolf
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Dale Struckenbruck (Saw)