Preliminaries Axis Guitar Competition Cat. 1
The guitar competition of the Twenthe Guitar Festival has got an other name this year. The Axis Guitar Competition. This is the first edition.
It is organised in three categories as usual, One for the professionals, Two for the amateurs older than 15 and Three for the youngsters, amateurs younger than 15.
The Axis Guitar Competition Cat. 1 has preliminaries which yield five finalists who will compete for the first prize. That’s because the number of subscriptions by far exceeds the one for the other categories.
This year the preliminaries were on the first day. I considered it a good idea, although participants who have to travel a long way may not agree with me. The announcements showed me that the rules had been made more strict. Submit scores in time with the jury and follow your Masterclass. Failing to do so would result in disqualification.
Again the preliminaries took place in the Ballet Hall, popularly known as Mirror Palace. Numerous mirrors on the walls enable a peek on everyone, players, audience and jury. The annoying thing is that you look people straight in the face even if you don’t want to. Curtains, however, were no option because they would damp the guitar sound too much. So we had to accept the additional views.
19 candidates would contest on the battlefield. In the list of participants I recognized some names from the last edition and a number of new contestants. Quite obvious was the fact that there were very little ladies, just one!
The participants presented their skills in front of a large jury. With Matijs de Roo as the chairman, Jacqueline Snel, Celia Preuschoff, Izhar Elias, Ed Westerik, Gerard Kroeze (all guitarists) and Annette Kruisbrink (guitarist/composer) participated.
Ivan Petricevic, one of last year’s finalists, opened the preliminaries. He played the Hommage a F. Mompou by Dusan Bogdanovic with a coherent melodic approach and a modest atmosphere. Exactly the atmosphere of the piano works of Federico Mompou himself.
Caprice Nr. 7 by Luigi Legnani made an end to the calm. Petricevic played it so virtuoso that I could not follow the musical line any more. Of course it is questionable if pieces like this are intended to have one, many 19th century composers/players made these pieces simply to show off.
The Allegro from Sonata Giocosa by Joaquin Rodrigo was his third piece. The sound of the piece surprised me, the usual harsh Rodrigo harmonies were virtually absent here. Petricevic played the piece in a compelling joyful way and gave the piece a cheerful folksy character.
Michael Vihula relieved Ivan Petricevic with two pieces, a Bolero from the Grand Serenade by Napoleon Coste and a Prelude in E minor by Nikita Koshkin.
The Bolero had to get started a bit, Vihula played the piece at top speed, but failed to keep the dansant mood. Well, that’s a challenge in this composition with some quite extended rapid scale passages.
Prelude in E minor became a little gem which started a game of question and answer in mysterious veiled sound and finally erupted in a fierce finale in triplets which died out in silence. This was Vihula’s best piece by far.
The third candidate -Dmitry Rodichev- played a few movements from the suite Light Frameworks by the guitarist/composer Nicola Japelli. The Moderatamente was an arpeggio piece with exiting harmonic movements. Vivace e ritmico was a very exited piece which reminded me of a track by the pop group Yes from the seventies.
Candidate four was Marcus Strand who played a really special guitar. It looked like a ten string guitar. His piece was Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude in E from BWV1006a, the fourth lute suite.
He started this work convincingly with a good sense of phrase and breathing. I found the sound of the guitar spectacular, it seemed that the sound got space in a kind of reverberation effect.
Unfortunately fate struck after a while, Bach became a killer again. Yet Strand succeeded in finding his way back and continuing without hurry, even though one would expect a bit of haste as a consequence of panick.
Albert Pia Comella took the baton. Elogio de la Danza by Leo Brouwer was his road to the finals. He litterally breathed his music passionately and added a lot of suspense to his performance, particularly in the passages with the rests in the Lento. Unfortunately the faster Ostinato became a bit sluggish. It appeared quite a challenge to fuse the separate passages into a coherent approach.
Around this time, for a change we were startled by the ultimate contactability obsession of these days. A cell-phone went off (yes the sound was spectacular). The other side, however, did not settle for the quick break of contact by the owner of the phone. An SMS ringtone immediately broke the silence again. When this message was not answered, the other side phoned again. Possibly it was urgent, annoying it was for sure. I guess we are heading for a cell phone ban in concert halls (hand in to the cloakroom, please!)
Biplaw Singh comes from India. He presented a composition by Nikita Koshkin, the Usher Waltz. Considering the gloomy atmosphere of the piece it must be based upon a story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher. It was quite clear that it was a very demanding composition, particularly in the cynical Waltzy section. Unfortunately Singh’s dynamics were less effective, apart from the passage in which the House Usher collapsed and perished in a gloomy silence.
Toshiuki Kumagai originates from Japan, but is studying in Vienna at the moment, so his travels were not that long! He started with a piece which I know quite well -Ricercare 57 La Compagna by Francesco da Milano. A capo on the third fret gave the guitar a lute like sound. He played the three part texture of the piece in his own interpretation of accelerando and decellerando.
His second piece was Preludio Epigramatico Nr. 4 by Leo Brouwer. This short and almost study-like piece was a pleasant contrast with Da Milano. Again in this piece Brouwer sounded more traditional than contemporary.
Now it was time for the only female contestant, Geneviève Lannoy. She started with Alcazar de Segovia from the suite Castillos de Espana by Federico Moreno-Torroba. Lannoy played the piece with a warm sound, but at times I could not follow the coherence between the fragments.
She concluded her contribution with two Caprices by Luigi Legnani. Nr. 7 had been part of today’s programme already. I remember Nr. 2 from The Classical Guitar by Frederic Noad. Two viruoso pieces with the inherent danger that speed affects accuracy. Which actually did happen with her performance.
Bert Maggen played Sevilla from Suite Espanola by Isaac Albeniz. He stroke up the fast movements with great enthusiasm, but did not forget to play an oasis of peace in this lively Spanish town by means of the slow movement. I found his play promising.
The stage now became the domain of Naoki Ikuta with two movements -Evocation en Dance- from the suite Whirler of the Dance by Carlos Rafael Rivera. After a bit of research, I wonder which section was this Evocation, because this title is not in the score.
The dance is a sequence of driving rhythmic patters with a let’s say contenporary harmony. The piece itself did not appeal to me, but it was clear that the guitarist was able to master the dance.
Ondrej Pavlicek took the challenge with Passacaglia from Tres Piezas Espanolas by Joaquin Rodrigo. This piece starts with a simple unisono theme in the bass. The challenge is to make this theme clearly heard throughout, despite all harmonic and rhythmic caprioles. This appeared tricky.
David Margolis went back in time with Prelude and Gigue from Partita Nr. 3 BWV1006 by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is quite a challenge to choose only the fast movements! Margolis had a personal yet slightly hurried approach.
Ruben Bettencourt played contemporary music with the movement Snowdrop from the suite 3 Forest Paintings by Konstantin Vassiliev. He performed it with great expression, in sound and movements alike.
He concluded his part with a piece of guitar atlethics: Etude 12 by Heitor Villa Lobos. A virtuoso piece which takes a long time to study.
Michal Staniowski dedicated his time to one of the most frequently played guitar composers, Leo Brouwer. He played the Hika ‘In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu’. A remarkable piece in which some passages immediately call the image of still Japanese landscapes as shown on pen drawings on rice paper. Staniowski presented the piece with a good balance between peace, tension and virtuosity.
Marcus de Jong had decided to play Bagatelle 1 by William Walton. I have to admit that my listening fun was frustrated by the composition. Such a muddled piece! I guess my level of intelligence does not permit to understand this musical utterance. De Jong did his best to play the piece well, but I just took off.
Jona Kesteleyn was one of last year’s candidates. He performed music by a contemporary of William Walton, Lento and Rondo from Sonatina for Guitar by Lennox Berkeley. I had to admit that I got the same feeling as with Walton’s music, in a slighly lesser extent. Contemporary is not my music. Yet Kesteleyn played it well-polished.
Jean Francois Macq interpreted two movements from the Suite en La by Manuel Ponce, a piece which was considered a newly discovered composition by Leopold Sylvius Weiss for a long time. Prelude and Allemande were played clearly and with a good finishing touch.
The Sonata by Antonio Jose had not been heard in this edition of the Axis competition yet. Hartmut Menning Mentz changed this, playing the first movement Allegro Moderato. His play was sonorous and he made the architecture of the piece quite clear. This is absolutely necessary for the listener in an extended movement like this.
Fabian Freesen -one of the competitors two festivals ago- concluded the primaries. His contribution resembled the one of Ruben Bettencourt, both a movement from the same suite by Vassiliev and both a Etude by Villa Lobos.
Dance of the Forest Ghosts by Vassiliev became a dazzling performance with all those rapid runs. Two fast movements enclosed a peaceful passage which was quite nice for the listenere to take a breather. Neatly played with some refreshing risks at times.
Etude 7 by Villa Lobos brought us dazzling runs and contrasting arpeggio passages. Particularly the arpeggios required quite some skill to lift the melody out of the noise. Freesen realised the contrast, but took care that the runs did not become the killers of the piece.
Well, that was a long session (time had progressed to half past five). No time-out disqualification this time, even though I observed a stopwatch once.
While the jury started to make up their minds, I left the hall with mixed feelings.
Involuntary I compare happenings like these preliminaries with the ones from the past. I do not know what caused it, but remembering the preliminaries from the past I got the impression that this year the performances were overcautious. It seemed that most players held back a bit.
What’s the cause of this? The sentiments of the financial crisis perhaps? (taking risks is dangerous). Or is it just like wine which in one season requires more maturation than in the other? Did this year lack the drive of some remarkable personalities perhaps? (;-)) Sabrina Vlaskalic comes to my mind for a moment..). I am not sure about it, but the flatness was quite obvious to me.
;-) OK, it is possible that I suffered from some hearing loss this year. Whatever it will be, the finals will decide in the end!