Tamas Pentek : Characters : Bergmann

Tamas Pentek

Bergmann Edition : 34 pages

Subtitled ‘ 14 educational pieces for solo guitar’ this book from Hungarian  player/composer Pentek has a lot of quite different sounding harmonies , always tonal but often rather strange .Mind you, I have never come across his pieces before fo this might be very reminiscent of his writing style for guitar.

The pieces start with Marching Dance, a 6/8 piece without a key signature, but with a key base of E, that begins on a solo line before other harmonies gradually enter. The first 24 bars are quite friendly sounding, before a sudden jump into a couple of bars ostensibly in Gm, and then a further bar  taking us through sharps and naturals , and then returning to the original melody now in Am. This doesn’t stay for long before a further excursion takes us into a number of different musical areas before finally finishing on a solo line, similar to the opening, and a close on an octave pair of Es.

Spleen, the next piece, is as he states at the top, good for the left hand and although in two voices for the greater part, manage to sound quite different, and have some quite unexpected technical areas, from the usual pieces you may have come across.

That technical and musical difference is consistent throughout all the rest of the pieces that vary from A Piece of Kindness, which, in spite of his opening comment, is far from simple, to Wake Up! , which is a piece that never sits still. After that the pieces are very varied, from a Simple Tango, to a Waltz, written in 6/8, and a Lullaby, just to mention a few more.

Technically these pieces are well worth playing, as they really do task the player, but musically i found them lacking, and often just in a very odd harmonic style that I personally found I couldn’t warm to. However if you know this man’s other pieces ( and as I said before, I don’t ) you might know exactly what to expect and could very well love these pieces and their very individual world.

Chris Dumigan