The Cuban Joaquín Clerch is best-known as a guitarist;
on the evidence of once having heard him give a recital in Salzburg,
I’d say he’s a very good one, and a much better
qualified judge, Eliot Fisk, has said of him that he “is
undoubtedly one of the world’s leading figures, perhaps
even the leading figure, among the guitarists of his generation”.
His work as a composer is rather less well known; even his web-site
lacks any information on this side of his musical activity.
These two concertos present him as a composer extending the
Latin-American tradition, a relatively conservative (my use
of the adjective is purely descriptive, not judgemental) descendant
of, say, Ginastera. The Latin flavour is generally present,
but by no means everywhere dominant, and the writing is lucid,
its sophistication unforced and free of undue elaboration.
Both concertos are in three movements. In the Concierto de
Otoño (Concerto of Autumn), written for one of his
regular playing partners, the excellent flautist Annette Maiburg,
there’s a conventional fast-slow-fast structure, though
even the outer movements are only marked ‘moderato’
- the central movement is marked ‘despacio’ (slowly).
The dimesnion of Autumn which served as the composer’s
starting point was, he tells, us its ‘emptiness’,
understood both as the bareness of the trees and as a psychological
condition, one which the composer views as having its positive
as well as negative value. The first movement (like the last
this is almost ten minutes long, while the middle movement is
a mere five minutes in length) has a certain dryness of orchestral
texture, against and over which the flute attempts something
more lyrical, a lyricism which is only occasionally and briefly
picked up by parts of the orchestra, and even then in its more
sombre aspects. The slow movement has a contrasting gentleness,
though it too is, fittingly, on the sober side. A long and very
eloquent cadenza, beautifully played by Maiburg, forms the bridge
to the final movement and effects a change of mood. The composer
tells us that in the third movement he has chosen to “deploy
Cuban folk themes à la Kafka and Stravinsky”. I
can’t say that the movement strikes me as having much
in common with anything by Kafka that I have ever read and even
the analogy with Stravinsky strikes me as only rather approximate.
But the Cuban material is certainly evident, and while the movement
as a whole is far from being a matter of dance and joy unconfined,
it does say much of the promise and the beginning of new vitality,
of the renewed life for which autumn is a necessary preparatory
stage. At times in this movement the orchestra seems, in a reversal
of the opening movement, to prompt the soloist into a greater
lyricism; the emptiness, literal and metaphorical, allows new
growth and new clarity, so that at the close there’s a
very real sense of looking forward. This is an interesting and
satisfying work.
The concerto for guitar, written for the guitar festival held
in Cáceres (in the Estremadura region of Spain) is a
more immediately accessible work, its emotional contrasts a
little simpler. The composer makes a thoroughly convincing soloist,
his playing marvellously expressive, whether in the anguish
of the first movement, which is given the title of ‘El
dolor’ (the pain) or the calmer, though not completely
untroubled, waters of the second, ‘El recuerdo’
(the memory, the souvenir), a movement full of both intensity
and elegance in a manner I think of as particularly Hispanic,
with some fine melodies and a brief but lovely, introspective,
cadenza, as well as some fine writing for the strings. The first
two movements are of similar proportions (either side of eleven
minutes) and this time the third is the shortest movement. Entitled
‘El pregón de la alegria’ (the proclamation
of joy) it is music of a more public nature than the deeply
personal earlier movements, as if joy has been found in public
festivals rather than in personal relationships; here percussion
is more to the fore, with echoes of marches and dances (notably
the famous Jota de Cáceres). On the whole the use of
the orchestra in this concerto is more colourful and forceful
than in the Concierto de Otoño, and I don’t
think it is only the knowledge that the composer is a guitarist
that makes one feel that the writing for the soloist is that
little bit more instrumentally idiomatic, as it were.
Certainly I initially preferred the Concierto de Cáceres
to its companion on this disc. Later listenings have left me
a good deal less sure of that preference. Both works, not least
in their differences, speak of Clerch’s quality and range
as a composer and both are well worth hearing. He playing of
the orchestra is immaculate, conductor Thomas Gabrisch clearly
has a secure and sympathetic understanding of both concertos,
and the recording quality is of the highest order.
Glyn Pursglove
Annette Maiburg (flute: Otoño) Joaquín Clerch (guitar:
Cáceres)
[52:23]