Day One: Concert Alieksey Vianna
The Brazilian Alieksey Vianna was no unknown guitarist for me, I have some recordings in which he plays music by Sergio Assad, amongst others the Aquarelles.
He came with a varied programme from Renaissance to Contemporary with a clear wink to jazz in the end.
The old music came first, two Ricercares by Francesco Canova da Milano (1497 - 1543). In his time Da Milano was a celebrated player with the epithet Il Divino, the Divine. He brought the non dance related musical form -Recercare and Fantasia- to a very high level. Vianna played the two Recercares and soon it became obvious that the fabric of voices which Da Milano had in mind was incredibly complex.
His second piece took us to the classical period, an Introduction and Caprice by Giulio Regondi (1822 - 1872). Regondi was an orphan and infant prodigy who spent quite a long period of his childhood "on the road" with his guitar and concertina under the "custody" of a stepfather who ran away with all the money and just left the teenaged Giulio behind. Fortunately others took care for him.
Regondi composed most of his music for the Concertina, a kind of accordion, but he also composed a number of quite technically demanding pieces for the guitar.
After playing the light-hearted Introduction, Vianna showed a great deal of technical tricks and virtuoso play in the Caprice.
It appeared that Vianna had cancelled the Sequenza XI by Luciano Berio, which was met by some cries of disappointment from the audience. Instead he started to play the daring exploit Prelude, Fuga and Allegro BWV 998 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750). The Prelude starts relatively quiet, the Fugue requires a great deal of vision and effort of the player, and the concluding Allegro is a war of attrition. Vianna reached the finish with visible signs of great effort.
Onwards to modern times we went with Leo Brouwer. Vianna played Rito de los Orishas. Orishas are divine creatures from the ancient animistic African religions, traditions which landed in Brazil because many African slaves were transported there. On of the best known Orisha-movements is the Candomblé .
Rito de los Orishas has two movements. The first one represents an at times sinister ritual with a lot of atmosphere. The second movement is the dance of the Orishas which have been invoked by the ritual. Vianna played this quite avant-garde contemporary work quite well (yes, I admit I never got further with Brouwer than the Estudios Scencillos), but I was not able to follow and analyse its structure.
Alieksey Vianna concluded his recital with strongly jazzy music by Ralph Towner. Evaluating his recital, I found that this was the music he really liked, the atmosphere differed dramatically from the one of the other pieces. This music was his heart and soul. He played the pieces Toledo, Tramonto and The Juggler's Etude with a lot of spice and liveliness. The highlights of this concert!
As an encore he played two pieces from his Assad project: Two Aquarelles, Valseana and Preludio e Toccatina. Well, specifially the Valseana has such a beautiful atmosphere...