Concertante: Modern Works for Guitar
Campbell Ross, guitar;
Benjamin Greaves, violin. Matthew Ryan, viola. Ngaio Toombes, cello.
Dave Mibus, piano. Lachlan Symons, bass. James Whiting, drums/percussion.
Disc One: Total Time:  53:47
Disc Two: Total Time: 44:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Ravello presents this two-disc set featuring composer and guitarist Campbell Ross in music that melds classical touches with a host of world music and jazz.  The first disc focuses on Ross’ own music while the second introduces listeners to the work of two brothers Ariel and Gerardo Dirie.

The album’s title comes from the three-movement work that opens disc one.  Inspired by Claude Bolling’s Concerto for guitar and jazz piano, Ross crafted a piece that blends various musical styles from popular (blues, jazz), world music (in this case elements of Latin music), and classical (i.e. Spanish guitar) style.  These various elements are strewn across the piece.  For anyone familiar with the Bolling work, this makes for an apt companion.  It is filled with fun melodic content and humor.  The string trio adds more of an element of class to the jazz-like implications of the music.  The “concertante” aspect is addressed by transferring important solos to the different instruments along the way which lends the music some of its additional color.  While the first movement seems a bit long, the central “rumba” is very moving lyrical pause before the final little light “Allegro.”  Unique harmonic twists and spun out melodic ideas against the shifting meters make for a fine conclusion.  Many will find it a delightful discovery in that sort of crossover musical genre.

This longer is work is followed by pieces for solo guitar.  First is the composer’s own four-movement Sonata (2011) with its nods to those of Ponce and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.  The pieces have more formal structures with an opening movement in sonata-allegro form and a concluding rondo.  The second movement takes its inspiration from Schubert with its songlike melancholy themes.  The third movement has a more intimate feel with interesting harmonic shifts.  At just under 20 minutes it is an important addition to the guitar repertoire.  To close off the album, Ross created two sets of variations, both on familiar Lennon-McCartney songs.  First is an exploration of variations based on “Norwegian Wood” followed by another on “On World Without Logic”.  In this case, one may wish to have the tunes handy at the end of each piece.  That said, these are interesting improvisation-like explorations of these tunes.

The bulk of disc two is given over to music by Argentinian composer Ariel Dirie (1960-2010) who taught at the Conservatory in Cordoba.  His brother Gerardo had a collection of his pieces which Ross was given for this recording of premieres.  The first of these is a gorgeous little work, Mesurando Y Dalias.  It is in a traditional style.  What follows are ten delightful Estudios.  These are essentially works written to help explore different technical aspects of playing the guitar crafted here in delicate pieces that have nice melodic content and interesting rhythmic interest that includes a couple tangos, and a final Argentinean dance (the chacarera) in the mix.  The pieces maintain a traditional harmonic style with thematic ideas that make them more than just technical exercises.  Listeners more familiar with guitar repertoire will likely appreciate more the way these different combinations of fingerings and techniques will translate again and again in other more familiar music, but here they are just the means to many beautiful ends.  The end result is music that has a playful wit.  Sometimes light percussion adds extra flavor (like the country-folk style that appears in the “Allegretto”).  There are also sounds of the bush that opening and close the album and appear in a couple other places unobtrusively.  The music thus fits quite well with South American folk-influenced art music.  The final work on the album is by Gerardo Dirie (b. 1956).

The three-movement Si un dia el Olvido is like a musical exploration of memory.  The first movement seems as if we are viewing things through a haze as ideas are introduced in smaller bits and pieces to grow into slightly more angular, or chromatic arrival points.  Motives are introduced in lines that have an almost serial outline, though the music itself tends to be more unsettling due to its ambiguity than any modernist tendency, though dissonance is an important component.  The central movement picks up the pace perhaps causing forgetfulness in the speed with which one is confronted or moving about.  This is in the traditional shifts from arpeggios and long lines that can be found throughout Spanish guitar literature.  The music here too maintains a bit of dissonance with more angular lines that seem to reference forgotten dances.  The final movement has references to the troubadour composer Ventadorn and more modern troubadours Lennon and McCartney.  With a playing time of just over 13 minutes, it is an important modern guitar work well played here by Ross.

It is not uncommon for there to be the odd performer noise in guitar recordings and there is some of that here but nothing obtrusive by any means.  Campbell Ross is on great display here as a guitarist with the ability to play across a number of genres and his program here demonstrates this.  His own works make for engaging listening that receive compelling performances.  There is a little bit for everyone in this set from jazz listeners, to those who enjoy Latin American-flavored concert music, to modern guitar music lovers.  The album allows the listener an opportunity to sit back and enjoy the many styles and moods in well-sequenced selections.  With both discs selling for the price of one it is quite the bargain.

Music from the Ethereal Side of Paradise
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Stanislave Vavrinek
Duo 46: Matt Gould, guitar. Beth Schneider, violin.
Darel Stark, violin.; Christian Saggese, guitar.
Composer’s Choir/Daniel Shaw
Lisa Cella, flute.
Navona Records 6148
Total Time: 57:36
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

John A. Carollo (b. 1954) has spent a majority of his life working in Hawaii as a mental health professional.  He had taken piano lessons throughout his life and decided to begin composition studies in the 1990s.  Since he has moved fully into composition and this new release provides a broad spectrum of his work from orchestral pieces to a collection of choral pieces and a variety of works for solo instruments.  The twelve pieces here have all appeared on earlier collections of Carollo’s music.  The earliest recordings here are from 2006 with the orchestral tracks being supervised in 2016.

The album is bookended by two works for string orchestra.  Awakenings opens the album.  It, like the final track Bright Stillness, are variations, or re-workings of a movement from the composer’s The Rhethoric and Mythos of Belief.  A falling motif opens Awakenings with a sort of tentativeness and dark, almost Gothic horror orchestral writing that might have come from the pen of film composer John Barry.  It is the stronger of the two versions.  Bright Stillness is a briefer version with the same sort of intensity, though more dominance given to solo violin.

Music for guitar figures prominently on the collection.  First is a suite, Romantica Passione for guitar and violin composed for Duo 46, who perform four of the nine movements here.  This is a little more modernistic in style from the “Romanzo!” movement that begins the exploration of this work.  The violin weaves about the guitar accompaniment here with some interesting transference between the two.  Additional percussive sounds and vocalizations are also included.  The guitar takes on a more melodic role in “Splendido Affare” as the violin doubles and expands slightly on this idea.  The music has moments where the ideas get twisted about as they become more passionate.  The dissonance is equally intense as this unfolds dramatically.  It continues in “La Tortura dell’ Amore”.

Carollo has composed a number of Metamorphosis for solo instruments.  One for violin (no. 3) and one for flute (no. 13) are included on this album.  The former continues this exploration of long, tortuous lines, and dramatic unfolding of abstract musical ideas.  The violinist must work across all registers to land on rich tonal pauses while interspersed are rapid passage ideas that might require some fast shifts across strings as the music gets more manic.  Daniel Stark manages all of this quite well.  The flute one features Lisa Cella who creates a warm tone here that explores the reaches of the instrument.  Her lower range is quite gorgeous and full here.  After a slow introduction, the music begins its journey of transformation and increased virtuoso turns amidst longer phrasing.  All done excellently here.

Guitarist Christian Saggese is featured on three solo pieces at the center of the album.  These all fall well within modern guitar writing with modernist tinges.  The Guitar Prelude No. 3-The Tai Chi Set features a fine reflective quality with subtle nods to Asian music references through the way the instrument is played and ideas are articulated.  Two brief etudes follow that are in line for interesting exercises for the instrument.

The four choral pieces here are the first explorations of choral writing by Carollo.  They are based on his own texts.  The style favors open and pure musical styles often in blocks with clean declaration in this performance.  It is almost like four-part homophonic chant writing with more mystical, but non-religious texts.  Each tend to be rather similar in their approach.

Carollo’s music is often quite compelling to listen to regardless of the forces.  There is an inner emotional quality that manages to come through in these performances quite well.  The orchestral works are the real highlights here with the performances of the solo works helping those shine.  Thus we have an excellent survey of Carollo’s music whose orchestral pieces linger in the mind far after they conclude.