Laurent Meneret : Vagabondages : DOz

Laurent Meneret

Les Productions D’Oz : 12 pages

 There are seven pieces here, all quite different and all having a very musical sound, and sometimes not always moving melodically the way you might expect .Moreover they are not too difficult, so will suit the relatively modest players amongst you. Vagabondages incidentally means Wanderings, which does aptly describe the pieces when you play them.

Au Fil de L’eau (Along the water) is a 4/4 in D Major, and a modest 69 crotchets a minute and has a melody that stays largely in the root position with a number of offbeat rhythms that don’t catch you out at all. This is a nice piece to start the set.

Melopee is a Cantabile one page piece in E Minor with a constantly moving melody line, nearly all in quavers over bass notes usually in minims.

Invitation au Voyage is an Espressivo piece in B minor that really does travel around not going where you expect, with a melody line that is not obvious by any means. Again it is in root position throughout, but has some unexpected moments in the harmony work.

Interlude is in E Minor, and largely arpeggio driven, with quavers in the top part, and longer notes underneath and yet manages to not sound like many other pieces in this key .That is something that one can say about this whole set.

Impromptu is marked Espressivo and really has a bouncy bass line melody accompanied by a top line, often of open strings that also spends most of the time jumping around rhythmically. This is one of the best of the seven.

Valse Breve is in E Major and is headed Giocoso, which it really is throughout the whole piece. At the given speed of 120 crotchets a minute, and with all the movements the melody and other voices have, this is one of the hardest to get your fingers around at first.

The final piece is Etude Romantique and is in 12/8 and E minor. At 76 dotted crotchets a minute this is always on the move in quavers but again manages not to be obvious in their melody line or accompaniment passage, which is a big plus.

This is pleasing set, friendly to get your hands around, and although Meneret stays harmonically tonal throughout, the pieces rarely go where you expect them to, which is certainly in the music’s favour. This is a book worth getting if you are a modestly good player.

Chris Dumigan