Milan Zelenka :13 Concert Etudes :Bergmann

Milan Zelenka

Bergmann Edition : 36 pages

Czech composer/guitarist Milan Zelenka has written numerous works for our instrument, including a few collections of studies, varying from the quite easy, to the moderate, and finally to the extremely difficult, which is what this latest publication actually is.

They each place you with a completely different musical problem .For them you need a thorough knowledge of the entire fret board, have a thoroughly exceptional right hand technique, and many other things besides, sop be warned- these are definitely , as the title states, concert etudes.

Yes they are very effective technically speaking .Take, for example No1, which, like the others in this volume has no time signature. Therefore the first few bars have bars where each one has two groups of 5 quavers, so a kind of 10/8? Then bar 7 has 2 groups of 6 quavers , making it a 12/8.Moreover there are several other places where the bars are time – wise quite different again, including 5/8, 13/8, 15/8, 7/8 and so on, but no time signature, which I find a little annoying, as there is nothing wrong putting them in , so that the player is absolutely sure that their timing is correct when they play. Apart from that the other thing that I found when playing through this complete set, was that musically they were not particularly interesting. If you want a technical study, then yes, these are fine, but if you want to enjoy the process whilst learning them, I found they were not particularly aimed in that direction.One1 more thing concerning No2, I think there is a misprint in bar 17, where the C# on string 5 then apparently becomes a Cb on string 2 , which I think should be another C#.

Notwithstanding that ,many of the pieces are concerned with vast spreads of arpeggios that do get a little wearing after a while, although there are a few others that are mainly covering several other guitar technical problems, and they are , in that respect effectively written.

So if the technical aspect of these pieces is going to be good for you to work through, then this is a fine publication, but if you want them to be very musically interesting as well, you might be disappointed.

Chris Dumigan