January 23, 2017

  • New Music for Guitar

     

    Butterflies in the Labyrinth of Silence: Guitar Music of Georges Raillard
    David William Ross, guitar.
    Navona Records 6071
    Total Time:  73:25
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Swiss-born composer George Raillard spent nearly two decades in Spain as a language teacher, translator, and writer.  As a youth he studied classical guitar and composition and since 1974 has composed some 50 pieces for the guitar.  Roughly a fifth of them appear here on this new Navoa recording made last July with David William Ross.  The pieces here were composed between 1999 and 2008 and are presented chronologically on the album.

    The first work on the album, Shells on the Beach (1999), is also the longest at ten minutes.  It is a series of seven smaller segments each exploring different disparate guitar gesture in a sort of improvisational stream-of-consciousness sense with a rather odd ending.  What follows are pieces that are musical impressions of places and images beginning with the reflective Night Waves (1999).  Raillard tends to take a particular motif, often a measure in length, and then loop and explore how it might turn out in different directions, always coming back to that initial idea.  After exploring this in a melodic sense, Raillard turns to the same concept as a pedal point in Pacemaker (1999) and will do something similar later in Dance of the Shadows (2004).  To Pilar (2000) feels a bit more structured with an identified thematic idea and a sort of “chorus” section to this larger work.  It presents another side to this series of short pieces.  Summer Evening at the Rhine (2000) has an often mesmerizing feel with repeated motivic melodies.

    Butterflies in the Labyrinth is an interesting solo guitar album.  At times reflective, it tends to only occasionally hint at the sort of Spanish guitar styles that tend to populate CDs.  Instead, it presents a voice that explores some of the many guitar tropes connecting them to descriptive titles that allow the mind to wander a bit as they play out.  Some rhythmic variety of meter would also help liven things up within the album.  Raillard certainly is fortunate to have David William Ross explore this wide range of pieces in this composition recital.  Some pieces are more engaging than others but no doubt there are guitarists who will want to explore these works for possible programs of their own.  The test will be if they can stand alongside other repertoire moving forward.  The album is beautifully recorded.