ABOUT THE PERFORMER
Born in Beirut, Lebanon to an Armenian family, Arie Dakesian picked up his first guitar at the age of six and has been playing ever since. His early studies were at the Parsegh Ganatchian Music School in Lebanon and the Yerevan State Conservatory in Armenia. Arie performed extensively during these years while also cultivating his interests in various folk traditions, especially those of Armenia. He entered the Royal College of Music in 2020, where he studied with Gary Ryan and Christopher Stell. A recent graduate of the RCM ‘with honours’, he is now continuing his postgraduate studies at the same institution as a Julian Bream Scholar, supported by the Julian Bream Trust. He has received prizes from organisations such as the Royal Philharmonic Society and is included on the highly selective rosters of the International Guitar Foundation and the Tillett Trust. He has performed at the RCM’s renowned Super Strings Sunday, the Play2Festival in Armenia and such prestigious London venues as the Royal Albert Hall, Kings Place and Wigmore Hall.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
This afternoon’s programme begins with Luigi Legnani’s Capriccio No. 7, a nimble showpiece crafted in a quintessential early nineteenth-century virtuoso style. Legnani (1790-1877) was a celebrated Italian tenor, guitarist, composer and instrument maker who is perhaps best known for his set of 36 caprices for solo guitar. These were likely inspired by the violinist Niccolò Paganini’s famous set of 24 caprices for solo violin. Like Paganini, Legnani initially created these dazzling gems as pieces for himself to perform, and they have delighted audiences ever since. Marked ‘prestissimo’ (as fast as possible), the seventh of the series demands formidable technique from both hands.
Our afternoon continues with a pair of short pieces by Arno Babadjanian (1921-1983), one of the most respected Armenian composers and pianists of the twentieth century. His music fuses Armenian folk elements with the sweeping grandeur and virtuosity of Sergei Rachmaninoff and the dynamism of Sergei Prokofiev and Béla Bartók. Babadjanian’s Melody & Humoresque (1970), originally for solo piano, consists of a lyrical first movement and a quirky dance-like second one. Our performer this afternoon, Arie Dakesian, transcribed these immensely popular works for solo guitar.
The noted English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) had a special fascination for music of the past and for the ideas of nighttime and dreams. Among the composers Britten held in highest regard was John Dowland (1563-1626), whose works inspired him on several occasions, including the Nocturnal to be heard this afternoon. Likewise, it is no surprise that Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), based on Shakespeare, remains one of the composer’s most-heralded works.
Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, written in 1963 for Julian Bream, combines these two aspects of Britten’s art. Lasting about sixteen minutes, its nine movements, or variations, each offer a different take on Dowland’s song ‘Come Heavy Sleepe’. Subtitled ‘Reflections’, colours and atmospheres suggesting nighttime infuse the work. Stylistically, the piece begins in a twentieth-century vein with sparse textures and zesty harmonies. As the piece progresses, our sense of musical history regresses until we hear Dowland’s theme in its original form.
Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) emerged as one of the most influential Spanish guitarists and composers of the late nineteenth century. He is considered to have laid the foundation for establishing the guitar as a concert instrument. Before Tárrega, the guitar was largely thought of as an instrument used only to accompany singers or to be played in a tavern or at a village fair. Tárrega’s music became known the world over when an excerpt of his Gran Vals (Grand Waltz) came to be the default ringtone for Nokia mobile phones.
The two pieces by Tárrega that conclude the first half of today’s programme reveal two different aspects of the guitarist-composer’s musical personality. The short Capricho Arabe is gentle, wistful and serene, while the large-scale Variaciones sobre ‘El Carnival de Venecia’ de Paganini (Variations on Paganini’s ‘The Carnival of Venice’) shows the full extent of what a guitar can do. Amidst a vast array of virtuosic pyrotechnics and intimate moods, the variations exude a sense of spontaneity, as befits the improvisatory nature of virtuoso variations in the nineteenth century. The variations also connect to the piece that opens this afternoon’s performance in that both are directly inspired by Paganini.
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The second half of this afternoon’s concert in many ways pays homage to the legacy of Francisco Tárrega, for it consists entirely of works by twentieth-century Spaniards. We start with a piece by Regino Sainz de la Maza (1896-1981), who gave his first public performance at age 18 and his last at 82. Sainz de la Maza was the dedicatee of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, one of the most famous guitar concertos ever written, and also played the solo part at the work’s premiere in 1940. Sainz de la Maza’s Rondeña, published in 1962, evokes the traditional flamenco genre of the same name that is associated with the mountaintop city of Ronda in Andalusia. Its vibrant rhythms and fandango character capture the effervescence of southern Spain.
Beyond writing the Concierto de Aranjuez, Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999) composed prolifically for a wide range of instruments and ensembles. He was also a virtuoso pianist. Blind from the age of three, he notated his compositions in Braille and had them transcribed into standard musical script. Unlike the other Spaniards featured on today’s recital, Rodrigo himself was not an accomplished guitarist. Nonetheless, he wrote some of the most important works in the instrument’s repertory.
The two works by Rodrigo featured today are cast in the same overall form. Two contrasting sections are presented, with echoes of the first reappearing at the end of the piece. Invocación y danza: Hommage a Manuel de Falla (Invocation and Dance: Homage to Manuel de Falla; 1961) includes quotes from some of the earlier Spanish composer’s most famous works, including Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy (The Tomb of Claude Debussy, de Falla’s only work for solo guitar), El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) and El Amor Brujo (The Witch’s Love). Its overall atmosphere is more subdued than the stereotyped musical evocations of ‘sunny Spain’ one might expect to hear. ‘Invocation’ is rhapsodic, nearly improvisatory in spirit, while ‘Danza’’s interwoven melodic lines and repeated notes imbue it with a sense of elegance and grace.
En los Trigales (In the Wheatfields, 1938), first performed by Sainz de la Maza, is just the opposite: the opening section is a vibrant dance while the middle section is meditative and reflective. Rodrigo himself said that the clarion-like harmonics (which also feature in the opening of Invocación y danza) are meant to recall the distant sound of bells at a harvest festival.
A student of Tárrega, Emilio Pujol (1886-1980) became one of Spain’s most celebrated guitarists and teachers. In addition to his research and publication on the early history of the guitar and its precedents, he was an extremely prolific composer, with 124 original compositions to his credit. The two works by Pujol that conclude this afternoon’s performance both concern the idea of cultural mobility in that aspects of one culture travel to another. Scottish Madrileño, meaning a Scottish inhabitant of Madrid, is a short, charm-filled work. It is as if we are experiencing the Spanish capital through the ears of an entranced Scottish immigrant.
Trois Morceaux Espangnois (Three Spanish Pieces) takes us from Spain to Cuba in that all three movements are based on musical forms popular on that island. The first, ‘Tonadilla’, evokes a comic musical theatre song genre that originated in Spain in the 1700s and became especially beloved in Cuba. Its popularity came through the theatre, not the dance floor, as opposed to the other two pieces in the set. The tango originated along the Rio de la Plata (between Argentina and Uruguay) and has numerous antecedents and substyles. Among the former is the Cuban Habanera, the title of which derives from Habana (Havana), the Cuban capital. Guajira is a Cuban folk song genre known for its underlying rhythmic patterns and dazzling special effects, the spirit of which Pujol captures in the final of his three pieces.
—notes by William A. Everett
