Today, guest blogger Tess Henley returns with her report on the concert she alluded to in her first blog 'The Ukulele Crosses Over' back in April.
Tess was kind enough to offer us some tickets to attend, and I'm very glad I did. Classical music is not a big part of what I do personally, but this concert proved to be a great mix of music, history and humour, as Tess explains....
West Sussex Guitar Club (WSGC) has been known to host recitals embracing other close relatives to the guitar; the theorbo and the lute. Our last concert of the year took us down a different lineage to a stringed instrument which is somewhat smaller than the guitar but is certainly playing the field in the concert hall and local music groups in popularity and repertoire. You have probably guessed by now, the instrument in question is...the ukulele!
Sasha Levtov's opening invitation to a recital featuring solo and duets on guitar, ukulele and the somewhat threatening 'machete de Braga' sent a tsunami of interest throughout the club. Publicity through Jon Wheeler's blog site and various Facebook pages brought in some new faces to the Regis School of Music concert hall. A larger than average audience eagerly awaited to learn about the history of the guitars distant cousins and to hear an interesting commentary and programme by Sam Muir and Lara Taylor.
Sam Muir began her musical studies at the Royal College of Music where she was awarded the Madeline Walton Guitar Prize. In 2012 one of her students and now one half of the duo, Lara Taylor wanted to join the ukulele group at her school. Sam visited her local music shop, acquired a ukulele and fell in love with it's harp like tones. This early acquaintance evolved into a mission to compose and arrange new works for the ukulele , the subject of her Phd, and to give a voice to this tiny instrument in the repertoire of classical guitar music.
The concert began with pieces for machete and guitar from the manuscript of Candido Drummond de Vasconcelas. Sam began with an amusing lesson on how not to pronounce the word 'machete' . Rather than having three syllables like the bladed knife used in horror movies, the pronunciation has only two, rhyming with Bernadette, cigarette and launderette. Sam then continued with a very interesting and informative prologue about the composer and how he came to write in the style of the European dance form.
In the age of sail, Madeira's strategic position made it an important node in the transatlantic shipping trade, firstly in wine then sugar. When these industries subsided it became a destination for travel and a health spa for those with TB. There was a thriving cultural life for foreign merchants and Candido composed numerous waltzes, polkas, boleras, marches and quadrules to entertain the ex- pats. Sam, playing the machete and Lara, the guitar, selected a few dances to perform, of particular notoriety was Clara's Polka.
Clara Phelps studied under Candido and when she married an English vicar she would entertain the ecclesiastical fraternity of her parish with his dance music. Sam and Lara captured the grace and lightness of this dance which originated in Bohemia. The final waltz had more 'almost' endings ever known to Sam and the audience were asked to gesture when the piece concluded. The small glances and nodding of the head between the two performers signalled the end. Lara then turned to the audience and said 'Bye' before going off stage whilst Sam dashed behind the curtains saying 'Back in a sec'.
Sam returned with her guitar exclaiming that it 'feels huge after the machete'. Undisturbed by the wailing of a nearby car alarm the two performed the guitar duet, 'Opus 34 no.2' by Ferdinando Carulli. Most guitar students have come across Carulli's repertoire as he was a prolific composer writing over 400 works for the guitar. Sam and Lara were as communicable and compatible as the famous pairing of John Williams and Julian Bream when they played 'Duo in G op.34' which was used as a theme for the popular television show “The Adventure Game".
The first half of the concert concluded with Sam performing the solo ' In Every Heart' by David John Roche on a tenor ukulele. Once again, this was preceded by an interesting talk on the origins of the ukulele which illuminated the guitar players in the audience who, by and large, were ukulele non savvy.
The ukulele is a fusion of the machete and the rajao. The rajao is a five stringed instrument from Madeira and shaped like a viola and tuned D-G-C-E-A. The ukulele dropped the D string and inherited this re-entrant tuning. The machete came from the Braga region of Portugal but also found it's way to Madeira and had a classical repertoire all of it's own. The ukulele inherited it's shape and 17 fret fingerboard. Termed a 'tiny guitar' and tuned D-G-B-D or D-G-B-E sent a flicker of recognition throughout the guitarists present. When the wine trade in Madeira floundered, the SS Ravenscrag ship and a new wave of immigrants sailed to Hawaii to replace the local population ,decimated by European introduced diseases, and all were ready to work on the sugar plantations.
On board was a machete and three Portuguese cabinet makers, come luthiers. They produced spruce topped and juniper bodied machetes but also ukuleles with egg thin acacia wood tops and in four sizes : soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The rest is history. 'In every heart' was composed in 2020 and David Riche took the title from a Billy Joel song. Sam applied a delicate and barely discernable 'Tarrega Tremolo' to her performance. The first half of the concert was met with a rapturous applause and Sasha's invitation of ' To enhance the memory of this evening please join us for a glass of wine'.
The second half of the concert began with three guitar duet compositions by Maria Linnemann. Maria was born in Amsterdam but studied violin, conducting and the piano at the Royal Academy of Music. She was later inspired by the German guitarist and painter to dedicate her studies to the classical guitar. Maria's aim in music is to touch the hearts of people and change people from the inside. Sam and Lara's performance of the hauntingly beautiful 'And If She Would' and 'Juliette' corroborated Victor Hugo's famous quote ' Music expresses what words cannot say and what cannot be left unsaid '. Sam recollected how, on performing 'Juliette' on a cold winter's day in Salisbury her string snapped just as she played the final harmonic.
Lara then left the stage and Sam, on solo guitar, carried us to the exotic sounds of Brazilian composer Dilermando Reis. We were enchanted by the sultry tones and rhythms of 'Se Ela Perguntar', 'Sobradinho', 'Conversa de Baiana', Xodo Da Baiana. Staying south of the equator, we then heard two Milonga's, which is an excited Habanera, by Argentinia composers Jorge Cardosa and Justo Morales.
Lara returned to perform with Sam the final piece 'The Last Rose of Summer' by Maria Linnemann. The applause almost lifted roof of the Regis School of Music away from it's walls and the audience received what it wanted, an encore. The concert ended with a piece well known to guitarists, particularly those studying for their grade VII... Pernambucca's 'Sound of Bells'.
The blend of instruments, solos and duets, European, South American and contemporary repertoire, music and narrative made this an extremely varied and interesting concert. Certainly members of the West Sussex Guitar Club enjoyed the music of the guitar's distant relatives and hopefully the ukulele players enjoyed listening to a classical repertoire. The machete and the music of Candido Drummond de Vasconcelas captured the heart and spirit of the British in the 19th century and thankfully Sam and Lara are continuing to do so today.
West Sussex Guitar Club would like to thank David Anderson and 'Equilibrium' for kindly sponsoring the concert and to Bognor Regis Town Council, George Ide Solicitors, and Little Florist for supporting us. We would like to thank Sasha and Nina Levtov of the Regis School of Music for hosting the occasion. And I would like to thank Jon and Vicki Wheeler for their part in the publicity and for attending the concert !
And I'd obviously like to thank Tess for her second, excellent blog. It's great to have someone share their musical interests in fields beyond my experience!
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