One of the more sensible decisions I've made over the last couple of years was taking up the classical guitar again after a gap of nearly twenty years (I've found out since that this experience isn't that uncommon). And another has been to join the Southampton Classical Guitar Society (SCGS). This society promotes the classical guitar in various ways, and for its members provides sessions of ensemble playing, and the opportunity to perform to a sympathetic audience (both absolutely vital for musical development). The SCGS also arranges recitals by distinguished players, usually in the charming space and warm acoustic of The Point, Eastleigh. In recent months we've had the pleasure and privilege of hearing, among others, Berta Rojas, the Montes-Kircher Duo, Marcin Dylla and Craig Ogden. If you're outside the six-string fraternity that's something like having piano recitals by Daniel Barenboim, Stephen Hough and Angela Hewitt on your doorstep. These are some of the contemporary masters of their art.
On Saturday (a memorably sloshy, sleety night) we had a recital from John Mills. This eminent figure in the guitar world is Life President of the SCGS, and the concert was the first of a series to mark the 40th anniversary of the Society. It brought back memories for me. The first guitar recital I ever heard was by Andrés Segovia, in what must have been one of his last performances (as Segovia ended, so Hebron began). Then I remember a concert by flamenco maestro Juan Martín. Then - I must have been about fifteen - I took a train to hear a recital at the Purcell Room by John Mills (I think my teacher had recommended it). It was probably my first inkling that there were great players out there who weren't called Julian Bream or John Williams. I can't remember what Mills played on that evening. But I do remember that, like yesterday, he had the music on a stand without appearing to look at it once. And I remember him saying 'cardboard has its uses' as he spread some vast score out on an improvised extension.
Mills studied with Segovia, Bream and Williams and over an illustrious career has taken and developed that precious heritage of technical mastery and musical imagination to various corners of the earth (New Zealand, England, Wales) in a series of professorships. Saturday's recital had something of a Segovia flavour to it, with pieces by composers closely associated with that artist, such as Tansman, Torroba, and Ponce. Mills also introduced pieces by Sor and Haydn by telling us they had formed part of Segovia's repertoire. With nothing pre-classical and nothing contemporary, the programme was very much a celebration of the core classical and Hispanic repertory for the instrument.
I find it difficult to 'review' these recitals. How do you review superb technique, beautiful sound, depth of feeling and a huge palette of musical colour? Yet each artist at this level is distinct and listening to them over time you get to recognise their particular sound. One thought that came to my mind listening to Mills was the Latin expression 'Ars celare artum est' - Art is to conceal art. This means, I suppose, that at a certain level of mastery it's hard to see what was difficult about it in the first place. Whatever struggles were involved in the making, they are invisible at the moment of delivery. That was obviously the case here, but also I felt that the expression came to mind because Mills's performance was devoted entirely to letting the music speak for itself. There are some wonderful players who delight us with imaginative, sometimes idiosyncratic touches: some of Yepes' phrasing, Bream's highly dramatic colour changes are instantly recognisable. In Mills's playing I felt a beautiful submission to the score: tempi, tone, dynamics - everything was there to bring out the story each piece told in its full depth. In acting and music, some performers project themselves and others draw us in. Mills drew me in, and then got out of the way, as it were, to let me hear the music properly. Well, that was my personal impression.
There are fuller details of the pieces here, so I'll stick to brief impressions. The recital began with selections from a suite by the Polish composer Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986 - what extraordinary events he must have witnessed). Deeply melodic music, based on Polish folk melodies, as the programme notes told us; but also, it seemed to me, echoing baroque suites too. The contrapuntal lines, bass playing against treble, came over with immaculate clarity. Torroba's Romance de los Pinos and Nocturno brought out different, richly Spanish sounds from Mills's Paul Fischer guitar. Torroba was followed by the earliest pieces in the programme, Sor's gorgeous Andante Largo (from Op.5), played at a stately but not funereal tempo, followed by a transcription of a Haydn minuet. It's very easy for this First Viennese School material to sound dull, as we go round and round the familiar chord sequences. What it demands from the player is an equivalent Viennese charm and elegance, and heaps of musical invention: it was a masterclass in itself to see Mills's right hand constantly varying the attack and tonal quality phrase by phrase. Venezuelan composer Antonio Lauro's Variations on a Children's Song was a delightful set (though this was my one passing doubt about the programming: Lauro is in very classical mode here, and after Sor and Haydn was that a little too much in this idiom in one helping?). Mills has an absolutely winning way with endings, looking up with a smile as he brushes off the last chord or pizzicato note. He brushed off the first half with two standards from the Spanish piano composers, Albéniz (Capricho Catalan) and Granados (Danza
Espanola), music that transcribes miraculously to the guitar.
Part Two began with more transcription, Debussy's La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin. Debussy is one of my favourite composers for the piano, and I wondered how those floating sustained harmonies would work on the guitar. But the tone qualities of the instrument - in these hands - took this familiar material to new, perhaps quieter and more inward places. Roussel's Segovia completed the French set (and continued the Segovia strand), and then we had Eduardo Sainz de la Maza's suite Platero y Yo, inspired by the sequence of prose poems of that title by Juan Ramón Jiménez. This suite was quite new to me (I knew of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's substantial set of 28 pieces, but not this one) and was my highlight of the evening. It started with the kind of lovely cross-string dissonances we all like to play around with in our improvisational moments, and covered moods from La Azotea (a view from a balcony) to walking (Paseo) to the deeply lyrical La Muerte and a warm-hearted salute to the donkey Platero en su Tierra (in his homeland). The final piece in the programme was Ponce's Sonata Mexicana, full of Latin American life, rhythm and passion. A beautiful encore piece defeated me entirely, but I hope to learn what it was shortly. Intriguingly, this was the only recital I have heard in this space using amplification. Sitting in the front row, I couldn't really notice it - perhaps it filled the sound out a little? - but it would be interesting to know why the decision was made.
I'm certainly glad I made the decision to take the Skoda out to do battle with the abysmal weather that evening. And a decent-sized audience was testimony to the large number of music lovers who weren't going to be deterred by the big freeze either. But SCGS Chairman Wayne Lines tells me that our attendance record as a society leaves room for improvement. It's all rather baffling. Consider the effort football fans make to see their heroes, and imagine what would happen if they had the opportunity to see Messi and Drogba for a tenner! That is the luxurious position we guitarists are in, in this part of the country (we're also served by the Winchester Guitar Festival, and a short car journey from the West Dean Guitar Festival, which is run, incidentally, by John Mills). So why would we not go and see a top-class recital like this one? My own record is not 100%, so I cannot get into the pulpit on this one, but here, after due reflection, are Hebron's reasons for forking out and turning up to live performance.
- To hear the music. Digital music is compressed, MP3 files drastically so (coincidentally, a day or so earlier, I heard a sound engineer on the radio say about 90% of the range of sound is lost in a download), and all recordings (including live ones) are edited, altered and generally fiddled about with. The only way of hearing the full range of sounds a classical guitar can produce is to listen to a good player with a good instrument in a concert hall.
- To see the performer. If you play the instrument yourself, a concert is a masterclass in things like posture (admittedly, there are some concert artists with decidedly quirky ones), hand position, and the art of keeping in touch with your audience. It's also much easier to follow things like changes in volume and colour if you can actually watch the performer's hands. Before recorded sound, all music was a visual as well as an aural experience, and a social one too. These are dimensions that only a concert can offer. If you don't play the instrument, the magic of seeing it all happen in front of your eyes is if anything even more magical.
- To learn about music. Every recital I have been to has taught me more about the repertoire and musical styles. And, of course, how to set about playing them. All the things listed above - posture, dynamics - we can immediately bring to our (in my case, at least) simpler repertoire. I read somewhere that a good aim for an amateur player is to play a simple piece as beautifully as a master would play it, and that seems a reasonable goal. Even if you ditch the pieces that require years in a conservatoire, there is still a huge amount of great music left.
- To be inspired. Some people say hearing blindingly good players makes them feel rather worthless. Oddly, I've never felt that way. (Has anyone been put off playing football themselves by watching the Premiership?) I remember watching Bream's Guitarra series when it was first on TV and playing the guitar afterwards - a little better than usual, I think, since some of that passion and concentration surely gets into you. I was fascinated to hear Mills say he heard Segovia play 33 or 34 times! It reminded me of an interview with Bream where he said the first time he saw Segovia, as a boy, he spent the entire concert watching the maestro's right hand through opera glasses. Well, if watching and learning is as important as this to players of the highest calibre, it suggests to me that it wouldn't do the rest of us any harm to do the same.
- To support the instrument. The classical guitar flourishes as a concert instrument only for as long as people actually go to the concerts. It's a moot point, I believe, whether sounds exist without anyone to hear them, but recitals certainly don't. Anyone who attends a concert has done something important in support of the instrument and its future. When performers thank us for coming, they really mean it.
On which rather righteous note, I remind myself again that I haven't managed to get to everything myself, and end by looking forward to the next one: Modern Guitar Trio, Sat 19th May. Without sleet, I trust.
