Mediterranean Sounds
St Monan’s Kirk, 28/6/2024
East Neuk Festival: On Mediterranean Shores, Ian Watt (guitar)
Scottish guitarist Ian Watt started the third day of the East Neuk Festival on the forenoon of 28th June in the stunningly situated venue of St Monan’s Kirk with an eclectic programme of guitar solos and guitar arrangements of piano pieces spanning 5 centuries and inspired by the Mediterranean. All pieces were played from memory.
A brief anonymous highly ornamented Italian pavane-like lute melody, ‘Se io m’accorgo ben mio d’un altro amante’, opened the recital elegantly and was followed by two early 16th-century lute Fantasias by Francesco da Milano. The first of these had a very Renaissance feel and a great sense of forward movement. The second was very contrapuntal and canonically complex, the voices skilfully played with different timbres, displaying what was to be evident as a feature of Ian’s playing, a huge timbral range.
Introducing the next pieces, Ian Watt spoke of the beautiful location and excellent acoustic of St Monan’s Kirk (agreed). Scottish composer John McLeod, who died in 2022) only turned to writing music for guitar, mainly specifically with Ian Watt in mind as performer, in his 70s. Though he wrote in a Nordic style, his Three Mythical Pieces are inspired by Greek mythology. The last of the three, ‘Ariadne’s Thread’ was written first as a 50th wedding anniversary present for his wife. The other two were added later to make a recital piece for Mr Watt to perform. ‘Amphion’s Lyre’ featured very modern-sounding chording and interesting sonic effects and was episodic, complex and atmospheric. The second piece, ‘Salamander’, was agile, twitchy and nervous, with sudden twists and turns, changing rhythms and percussive sounds from tapping the belly of the instrument. ‘Ariadne’s Thread’ was slow and contemplative with moments of tenderness interspersed with short passages of scurrying arpeggiation, suggestive of a spinning wheel. Super piece.
Another feature of Ian Watt’s performance was fastidious attention to precise tuning. This even included micro-adjustments ‘on the fly’ while playing, though my ear was unable to discern whether this was relating to intonation or temperament, adapting to key changes in the music. String players know instinctively that A-flat and G-sharp, for example, are not precisely identical, even though temperament attempts to average out the differences for keyboard players. Thus tone, timbre and intonation all benefitted from an attention to detail throughout the recital, earning the most intense admiration of this reviewer, for one.
Solo guitar arrangements of two French piano pieces followed. Debussy’s ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) received beautiful phrasing, with elegant rubato, sweet cantabile and a lovely use of harmonics. Cêcile Chaminade’s ‘La Morena’ from her ‘Caprice Espagnol’ achieved a fiesta atmosphere with a variety of timbral effects, a light triple rhythm and the thrilling effect of rapidly repeated single notes with the Hispanic-rhythmed melody moving underneath. A sweet ending with a final flourish sealed the illusion.
The programme concluded with Antonio Josê’s sole work for guitar, a 4-movement sonata. A friend of Federico Garcia Lorca, Josê suffered the same fate, executed by the Falangists in the Spanish Civil War. Ian Watt confided that it was plain that Josê was not a guitarist, leaving players to find their own solutions to the ‘unplayable’ bits. The influence of the French impressionist school is very evident in the music, nowhere more so than in the second theme of the first movement, very like a bridge passage in Ravel’s Piano Trio. The second movement, an elegant fluid minuet, was very charming. The leisurely pavane that is the third movement featured alternating passages of dotted and straight rhythms in a melancholy vein but ending in a tierce de Picardie. The finale starts as a virtuosic perpetuum mobile but has moments where the music pauses to catch its breath, like a pursuit with places of brief concealment. The lovely second theme from the first movement makes a brief reappearance before the final dash.
Ian Watt’s charismatic music-making captured the hearts and admiration of the enthusiastic audience. A characterful rendition of the fifth of Granados’ Spanish Dances was the stylish encore that rewarded their applause.