Brent Parker : Vol 3 , Five Portraits for two guitars : Bergmann

Brent Parker, edited by John Feeley

Bergmann Edition: Score and separate parts 28, 13 and 12 pages respectively)

Brent Parker was a new – Zealand born composer/pianist whose music was performed in many countries. He did compose guitar concertinos played by John Feeley, this book’s editor but apparently didn’t play the guitar himself. So I gather that these pieces did not originate as guitar works.

He writing is immediately very different to any you might have seen before, as the style is quite individual, always tonal, but in a very manner to what you might usually see/hear. The portraits are not named and so if these 5 pieces were about specific individuals, we don’t get to find out any more about them.

No1 is set in E Major, and is a Moderato 3 / 4 where the melody line is constantly on the move, with a myriad of different rhythms taking place, making for a difficult read. Also the writing is not particularly guitaristic in the manner you might expect and so even though it is all playable, it is quite surprising throughout. Also the parts do often swap over from guitar 1 to 2 and back and so no single guitarist gets all the accompaniment parts.

No2 is also in E Major but now in 5/4 and considerably shorter than the opening piece. Again multiple rhythms are to be found, and the guitarists are constantly on the move and all over the fingerboard.

No3 is in A Major and the very rare time signature of 15/16., which is often two groups of 4 semi – quavers, a group of three, and finally another group of 4.Add to this the fact that guitar two has numerous off beat bass notes and you are left with a piece that is usually in semiquavers in guitar 1, but nevertheless, really tricky to get your fingers round.

No4 is in E Major again this time in 6/8 with the almost constant rhythm in guitar one being a dotted quaver, two demi – semi quavers and a quaver making up the first three quavers in many of the bars here. Guitar 2 has a much easier time of it here, playing often single notes interwoven around large amounts of rests.

The final No5 is a Moderato in Am, and a mixture of time signatures, namely 3 / 4, 4/4, and 3/2, and mainly single notes throughout its 34 bars, and has a very odd coda where the music just winds down and stops.

My duet partner and I didn’t really get emotionally involved with the huge majority of this book, as it was constantly unusual, in a style that we found odd, and also supremely hard to play at the same time. However if you have come across this man’s music before, you may think utterly differently.

Chris Dumigan