Victor Frost – Concertino for guitar and chamber orchestra, op. 17

Показать описание

Lydian Ensemble
Conductor – Andrea Amici

Guitar Solo – Davide Sciacca

Violins I – Giovanni Cucuccio, Antonio Ambra, Marco Vincenzo Giuffrida, Dario Emanuele Carlo Militano
Violins II – Alexandra Dimitrova, Samantha Fidanza, Alexandra Butnaru, Manuela Emilia Caserta
Violas – Rosaria Milici, Clelia Lavenia
Cellos – Teresa Raffaella Suriano, Chiara D’Aparo
Double bass – Patrizia Privitera

Flutes – Andrea Maria Virzì, Ettore Sambucci
Oboe – Roberta Trentuno
Clarinet – Emanuele Salvatore Anzalone
Bassoon – Giovanni Petralia

Horn – Riccardo De Giorgi
Harp – Antonella Cernuto
Percussion – Giovanni Caruso

Sound Engineer – Riccardo Samperi
Recorded at TRP Studio, Tremestieri, October 2020
Flavio Alaimo – luthier, guitar 'Alaima'

The composer writes:
This work took its final form in 1993, but incorporated sketches dating back decades. There are only two tempo markings, Mesto for the slow introduction and Scherzando for the rest. But there is really just a single tactus, inasmuch as the latter is simply twice the speed of the former.

My Concertino is in one sectionalized movement, like Weber's Konzertstück. The first section is an Intrada, the slow introduction marked Mesto. The faster Scherzando marking obtains for a jaunty Spanish dance in 3/2 (second section, Bolero), a fugato interlude in 6/8, back to the 3/2 dance, continuing in 3/2 to start the third section (Cadenza) but switching to 5/4, and to close, a substantial Rondo in common time.

At one point in the Bolero, the solo line is about to go too low for the guitar, and the bassoon obligingly takes it over. But it takes its last four notes and unexpectedly inverts them, in 6/8 time, to form the subject of a tongue-in-cheek fugue. The guitar solo remains for the most part aloof from these learned goings-on (including, heaven help us, the augmented retrograde of the subject from the 'cellos and basses!), but finds his only ally in the percussionist, who uses castanets to remind the players that we're supposed to be evoking the Iberian peninsula. Presently, the guitar picks up its Bolero where it had left off before the contrapuntal interruption, quite as if such had never occurred. The influence of those popular Spanish concertos is evident elsewhere in my opus as well, as in for example the sultry tango episode for the flutes and guitar in the Rondo finale.

Concertino is dedicated to New York conductor and guitarist Scott Jackson Wiley.