Five Pieces from The Album For Guitar by John Lessard скачать в хорошем качестве

Five Pieces from The Album For Guitar by John Lessard

Five Pieces from "The Album For Guitar" by John Lessard, composed in the 1980s played by Jerry Willard guitar - Recorded January 2016 Stowe Vermont http://www.jerrywillard.com An interview with John Lessard can be found here http://www.kcstudio.com/lessard2.html Performed as follows: Invention No. 2, Interlude No. 1, Song & Scherzo, Interlude No. 2, Allegro Album for Guitar John (Jack) Lessard’s attraction to the guitar was sparked by his Stony Brook University colleague Jerry Willard, a magisterial performer on the instrument, and by his daughter Laura who had begun studying the guitar in the 1980s. The Album for Guitar (1983-86) was conceived as a series of eleven short vignettes, each of which explores distinctive sonic possibilities of the instrument. The movements may be selected and combined in any order the guitarist deems artistically effective. Jerry Willard worked with the composer on delivery and interpretation of the Album pieces, and collaborated on certain editorial aspects. Among Jack’s central concerns were differentiation between ‘dry’ sounds (sforzando or staccato) and sustained, cantabile sounds, precise dynamic contrasts, and subtle interconnections of rhythms, motives, and pitches across the course of a movement. The Album presents a fascinating range of technical and interpretative challenges to the performer. The five movements presented here are written in a relatively advanced tonal language and range across a spectrum from rather tightly constructed pieces to quite improvisatory ones. Invention II is marked “Hommage à Igor Stravinsky.” Stravinskian qualities include frequently changing time signatures, pronounced rhythmic motives, delight in dissonances (especially major and minor seconds), and sudden sforzandi on wide-ranging stacked chords. One dissonant chord—a combination of tritone, major third, fourth, minor seventh and ninth that spans a remarkable 2 and a half octaves—provides recurrent punctuation and ends the movement. Interludes I and II are improvisatory and fantasy-like in nature. Trills, tremulos, harmonics and abrupt silences give a sense of free-ranging exploration of sound—a modern interpretation of Baroque preludizing. Song and Scherzo is a hybrid that begins as a relaxed cantabile with melodies unfolding in both middle and upper registers. The Scherzo intervenes, initiating fast, energetic figurations. The cantabile returns toward the end but is disrupted by brief scherzo interjections. A luminous harmonic tone ends the movement. The virtuosic Allegro (from ‘Four Short Pieces’) begins with fragmentary gestures and then explodes into a middle section marked poco feroce whose figurations range widely (and wildly) across three octaves and a third. A sweet-sounding harmonic at the end is eclipsed by a “brutal” final fortissimo chord. Note by Sarah Fuller-Lessard with the collaboration of Jerry Willard (March 18, 2016) The Movements of the Album for Guitar: 1. Prelude; 2. Invention I; 3. Invention II; 4. Song and Scherzo; 5. Interlude I; 6. Four Short Pieces; 7. Interlude II; 8. Bagatelle I; 9. Bagatelle II;10. Capriccio; 11. Bagatelle III. Brief Biography of John Ayres Lessard (1920-2003) Born in San Francisco, John (Jack) Lessard early showed an aptitude for music and in 1937 went to Paris to study at the École Normale de Musique with Nadia Boulanger and Alfred Cortot (piano). After serving in the US Army (1942-45), he returned to the New York City area where he taught piano and music theory before being appointed professor of music at the State University of New York Stony Brook in 1962, a position he held until retiring in 1990. Lessard’s early music was neo-classic in style, but in the 1960s he began exploring dodecaphonic writing, and eventually gravitated to a generally pan-chromatic tonal palette in which particular tones temporarily emerge as central and experimental harmonies and piquant clusters abound. His mature music tends also to be rhythmically fluid, and to create expressive tension between relatively calm and fairly agitated passages. Textures are often contrapuntal and challenge listeners to follow multiple lines unfolding simultaneously in different registers. Many of his mature works were written for distinguished performance colleagues in the Stony Brook Music Department. Besides solo guitar works, his catalogue includes chamber works for two guitars, for guitar and percussion, and for guitar and strings.