Leonid Hrabovsky : Complete Music for Solo Guitar : DUMA

Leonid Hrabovsky

Duma Music : 39 pages

Leonid Hrabovsky is a Ukrainian composer, born 1935, now living in the USA. Over the years he has written a great many pieces for all manner of combinations of instruments and voices but this book has his entire guitar solo works, which amount to 13 different pieces, spread over 4 actual works.

The Night Blues is the first one. It is set in B Major and this one immediately has an opening page that is a mixture of octaves with the top note an artificial harmonic and some 5 note chords that are very tricky indeed, and really caught me out, as the complexity of this writing is quite extreme. After this first 17 bars of introduction, there is a key change to E Minor, and everything slows down as this new idea emerges, set in two voices but still full of accidentals and many different combinations of rhythms including quintuplets , septuplets and every combination of other rhythms you could possibly think of. A new final section marked Moderately, completely made up of chords leads to a final coda where there is an ossia for the last four bars, both ending on completely different chords.

The pair next is called Tango and Foxtrot, and here again the chromatic writing is very difficult to cope with. Moreover I am certain that the opening bar of the Tango has three chords that are impossible to play, as they have a sixth position marking , where you use up all your fingers on the top five notes , and yet he wants an A on string six, at the bottom, which is fret 5? After that the very individual writing causes many problems, before the final coda where there are three final versions of the last bar. The Foxtrot is slightly more accessible as there are two voices that for the most time are single notes. The speed is marked Fast, and set at 160 crotchets a minute, and the work is less chromatic than the others, and therefore easier to read and get your fingers around.

The three pieces in an Old Style are a Romance – Elegy, interestingly set in two different keys, firstly in Am , and then in Dm (Not sure why!) , secondly a Waltz in A Major, with a number of ossias and finally a Polka set in Em. All the pieces here are still quite difficult, but less problematic to play, but still with moments that are destined to catch the player unawares.

The final set is called Homages, and is seven works, a Ciaccona in Memoriam Henry Purcell, An Aria In Memoriam Johann Sebastian Bach, an Impromptus In Memoriam Franz Schubert, a Prelude In Memoriam Frederic Chopin,A Little Cakewalk In Memoriam Scott Joplin, a Chorale , in Memoriam Johannes Brahms, and finally an Amoroso In Memoriam Sergei Prokofiev. They are all a little shorter than some of the previous pieces, and musically mostly less complex, but still need a good player to do them full justice.

It is a very individual book, this one .It made me wonder, firstly, whether the composer was actually a guitar player, because I doubt he was, as so much of the music is awkward and occasionally very difficult indeed. Now if someone else edited it, or helped the composer, then no one is mentioned other than the guitarist. As a result, it really is harmonically very advanced, and guitaristically mostly very unusual and difficult indeed. Just to give you one example of a chord I have never seen before , put your first finger on a C, string two fret one Now your second finger on an E , string 4 fret two. Now your third finger on the C, string 5 fret three, and finally your fourth finger on an A, string 6, fret 5. How unusual is that?

That is just one of several, and so I can only say that if you know this man’s music and want to have a stab at it, go for it. Otherwise you will probably find it very difficult indeed.

Chris Dumigan