It is no surprise that the unique and highly experienced classical guitarists who make up the Melbourne Guitar Quartet continue to bring a capacity crowd to their chamber music performances. Formed in 2005, this highly experienced and unique guitar ensemble keeps delivering fresh, contemporary arrangements and new compositions, superb musicianship and personality. The audience seems to comprise friends, musicians and composers, plus, post-concert, a long queue of admirers is always buying recordings and talking with quartet members Benjamin Dix, Dan McKay, Jeremy Tottenham and Sophie Marcheff.
In the beautiful acoustic of the Primrose Potter Salon, with intimate soft red lighting as a backdrop to the scenic view of this guitar ensemble – with treble, baritone, classical bass, requinto (smaller, higher pitched guitar) and standard classical instruments used – this was a visual and aural delight.
Australian composer and violinist Anne Grenfell’s original work for guitar and marimba was transformed by Hamish Strathdee into a fine ensemble piece. Almost etude like, its opening rapid, free flowing bubbling arpeggios and irregular metres, punctuated with random percussive unison chords, highlighted the energy and excitement this ensemble generates. A slower second movement brought short lyrical melodic patterns, free and soft in conversation, exchanged and shared across both high and low ranges of each instrument, with long held pauses holding our focussed attention on the anticipated timbral spectrum and wonderful resonance of string sound. Melodic phrases and their accompaniment were given blended ensemble and remarkable contrasting timbres, before a final allegro movement revelled in vibrant palming and percussive strumming through electric metre changes.
Melbourne based South Korean guitarist, composer and sound artist, Sanghoon Lee, was given much welcome, being in the Salon to hear his world premiere of Trigram, a fine commission by the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Trigram was a fascinating work, a complex design inspired by some elements of traditional Korean folk song rhythm and shape, with exotic percussive colouration. Elements from nature, Earth, Wind and Fire inspired the opening movement with traditional repeated pulse beats, low strummed rhythms and bass melodies giving us an exotic flavour. Gentle contemporary chordal shapes were passed around the ensemble, sometimes unresolved in time. Palming of dampened strings, slapping wooden pulses on guitar bodies, strumming behind the nut of the guitar and elusive harmonics from lightly tapped frets, were central to colourful dance movement. A beautiful third movement used mysterious pairs of melodies, rising through exotic times and places, hinting at dance movement, lyrical yet bare in harmonic flow. More active percussive effects and a developing superimposition of irregular rhythms and chords strummed high up the neck, brought new ideas, new tunings and much excitement in a virtuosic close. Ensemble members were very happy to congratulate Sanghoon Lee again, as they clearly enjoying playing this finely structured new composition.
Philip Glass first captured the world’s attention with his unique film scores, and from the 1984 award-winning film Mishima, we heard six selections adapted from the original score for String Quartet, by Melbourne Guitar Quartet member Benjamin Dix. The stridency, edge and tension from Glass’s music, so often describing the angst of contemporary city life, even unnerving at times with its repetitions and rhythmic drive, was beautifully softened today with this blend of 24 classical guitar strings, producing warm resonance and a spectrum of colours. Glass’s familiar harmonic sequences and repeated hypnotic melodic lines were there, driving forward with rapid broken chords, flawless finger picking, carefully shaded inner melodies and variegated timbres. The balance in ensemble pianissimos was exceptional, and very engaging – Glass re-imagined.
With the growing numbers of outstanding Australian classical guitarists and composers writing for the instrument now gaining world-wide acclaim, it seems most unfair that the instrument seems to be overlooked for funding and stardom, although our Universities can indeed celebrate the growing number of graduates recognised internationally as performers and composers. Without the personal commitment to self-funding and CD recording and marketing, few Australian achievers in the classical guitar world are household names. Australian classical guitarist and composer Phillip Houghton (1954 – 2017) achieved critical acclaim with works recorded by John Williams and Karin Schaupp, with much successful work for media and experimental forms.
Houghton’s three-movement work, Opals, was a splendid finale to the program, its first movement at times in the style of a contemporary waltz, with gentle arrhythmic and syncopated accompaniment, expressing biting tonal shifts in colour with guitarists’ use of harmonics weaving a magical spider web. With a continuous weaving of contemporary ideas from one guitar to another, further percussive hand palming and finger taps on wooden guitar bodies, atmospheric harmonics from single strings added floating drops of sound to the second movement. I would call the final movement a true Allegro virtuoso, where the gentle hurrying and scurrying of continuous tremolos created a buoyancy and a gentle fiery scene.
Always innovative, inspiring, impressive in every degree, this was another fresh, contemporary and most beautiful performance from Melbourne Guitar Quartet.
Photo supplied.
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Julie McErlain reviewed the Melbourne Guitar Quartet’s concert “Trigram”, given at the Melbourne Recital Centre in the Primrose Potter Salon on Saturday June 15, 2024.
