Annette Kruisbrink :Petit Rondeau d’Alamanda

Petit Rondeau d’Alamanda

Annette Kruisbrink

Les Productions D’Oz: 4 pages

Reviewed 7th March 2017

This extremely prolific Netherlands- born player has produced over 300 compositions and more than 20 CD recordings, and her work is often highly individual and covering a wide range of feelings and emotions.

This latest work is tour –de –force from the outset. It is in D major and set in 7/8.The opening Rondeau main theme is four bars of catchy melody, unusual juxtaposition of harmonies next to one another, and a penchant for leaping around almost non - stop. I immediately thought of a child’s dance when I played it, for the nature of the music seems very innocent and child- like in its journey, and very extrovert with its multiple use of hammer – ons, sometimes with whole chords, many occasions of lightning – fast runs of up to sixty – fourth notes together with quick little strums on the odd three – note chord, and later on full – on rasgueado strums over the entire fingerboard. Indeed the whole gamut of guitar technique seems to be used somewhere in this little 88 bar piece.

The hardest thing about the piece is simply keeping it going at the Allegro that it needs for the player is so often called upon to get from first position to the fourteenth or seventeenth frets that it is very difficult to achieve.

That said this is a wonderful piece, and such a show – stopper of an encore that I hope someone soon picks up on it. Fabulously clever!

Chris Dumigan