Craig Ogden : Yoshimatsu Symphony No2 – At Terra etc : CD

YOSHIMATSU: Symphony No2 - At Terra; Guitar Concerto ‘Pegasus Effect’ Op21; Threnody to Toki Op12.

Craig Ogden: (only on Guitar Concerto) with Sachio Fujioka, BBC Philharmonic. Other tracks have no guitar element.

Chandos : CHAN9438

With the opening Symphony (in 3 movements and lasting 32.40 minutes), and the Threnody to Toki (12 minutes 40 seconds) having no guitar element, you might think that this is not worth my reviewing. However the Concerto is 5 seconds short of 24 minutes and therefore the piece is a major work for guitar and orchestra.

The three movements are called Bird, Flower, and Wind respectively, with the opening movement beginning almost immediately on the guitar via some rasgueado chords backed by some strange moments in the orchestral accompaniment. The guitar is immediately thrown into the music and is kept very busy with tremolo – like lines and lots of diving around the fingerboard in quite a modern musical style, that is still very emotive, musically, but may not be immediately to everyone’s liking, although its modernity does grow on you after a few minutes. There are lots of moments where the Bird of the title is imitated by, usually, the wind instruments in the orchestra but the guitar almost never has a break, as he is  often either thrashing chords , or doing very fast runs up and down the fingerboard, although there are of course moments when the quietness takes over, particularly nearing the end of this movement, until the final moments when the tremolo styled line takes over and together with some castanets, the movement closes on rasgueado chords.

Flower begins in a still fashion with long held chords from the orchestra underpinning thoughtful lines on the guitar. Gradually the music picks up some motion, but the guitar is almost constantly in the forefront of this movement, with some very effectively strange accompaniment from the orchestra. The movement closes with mostly a solo guitar line and some gentle long chords from the orchestra, similar to the opening of this movement.

The final Wind has a strong and very dissonant idea from the guitar, until the orchestra enter, again with lots of wind- like sounds coming from the wind players, and very difficult and very small noted runs being performed on the guitar. Indeed this has some of the most tricky guitar parts in this concerto, as Craig Ogden constantly has to fly around the fingerboard in a much unexpected way. This last movement is the shortest, but definitely has the most content in it. The ending comes suddenly and, to my ears at least, a slightly downbeat way, so that for a second or two , you don’t think the concerto is over, but it is !

To summarise, this concerto is interesting, modern in style and for the most part, pleasant to listen to, but is written in a way that some may find a little odd. There are very few moments where you can enjoy a pleasant melody – it’s not that sort of a concerto – but the playing by Craig Ogden is astonishingly good, and for that alone, there will be many people who will want to find this album.

Chris Dumigan