Benedictine College, Department of Music is presenting the Senior Recital of Guitar Major, Charles Iner this week.
It’s been a real pleasure to know and work with Charles in his weekly guitar lessons and performances at BC over the last few years. He’s put together a really strong and diverse program of music here. Sure to be one of the finest guitar recitals in recent memory.
The recital is free and open to the public.
April 7, 2017
4:00 p.m.
O’Malley-McAllister Auditorium
Benedictine College
Benedictine College
Department of Music
Presents
Charles Iner, guitar
in
Senior Recital
Assisted by
Austin Steele, tenor
Jason Riley, guitar
April 7, 2017
4:00 p.m.
O’Malley-McAllister Auditorium
Benedictine College
Program
Dance of the Miller Manuel De Falla (1876-1946)
(From El Sombrero De Tres Picos)
Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Debussy
Asturias (Leyenda) Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)
*****
The Lowest Trees Have Tops John Dowland (1563-1626)
Flow My Tears
*****
12 Danzas Españolas, Op. 37 Enrique Granados (1867-1916) Orientale
Suite for Two Lutes William Lawes (1602-1645) Corant I
Alman
Corant II
*****
The Prince’s Toys: Suite for Guitar Nikita Koshkin (b. 1956) The Mischievous Prince
The Doll with Blinking Eyes
Playing Soldiers
The Grand Toys Parade
This recital is given in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts in Music degree. No flash photography is allowed during the performance. Thank you.
Notes
The Dance of the Miller: This piece, originally an orchestral work from Act II of Manuel de Falla’s ballet El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), is a lively number full of drama, contrast, and the rhythms of the dance. Rooted in Andalusian flamenco styles, rasgueado (strummed) sections are set beside sets of melodic variations reminiscent of flamenco falsetas, calling to mind the folk music and dance tradition of the southernmost part of the Iberian peninsula.
Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Debussy: Written in tribute to French composer Claude Debussy, Homenaje… combines the Spanish flavor prominent in much of Falla’s music with a French impressionist influence, presenting the extended harmonies and pianissimo dynamic levels characteristic of Debussy’s work alongside the drama and dark romance of early 20th century Spanish Neo-Romantic music. In the film My Life in Music, the great guitar maestro Julian Bream shared this anecdote related to the piece: “I gave a concert and I played the famous Homenaje by Manuel de Falla […] and at the end of the concert, Britten (English composer Benjamin Britten) rushed ‘round, he said ‘Julian, that Falla piece,’ he said ‘that’s the most magnificent piece,’ he said, ‘do you know, it probably only lasts around four or five minutes, but there was twenty minutes of music in that piece!’”
Asturias (Leyenda): A piano piece now far more popularly played upon the guitar, Asturias (Leyenda) is a work of incredible power and grandeur. Beginning with an intense flamenco-influenced section populated by tremolo finger-picking techniques, Asturias builds to a crescendo, then dies away to a softer, slightly slower, but still powerful middle section, before returning to the first theme and a releasing, satiating conclusion. It is the soundtrack to a still but charged Andalusian night, as you strum your guitar, lonely upon a mountaintop, with the lights from the ancient Alhambra palace burning in the distance.
The Lowest Trees Have Tops
The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall the fly her spleen, the little spark his heat, and slender hairs cast shadows though but small and bees have stings although they be not great. Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs.
And love is love in beggars and in kings. Where waters smoothest run deep are the fords. The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move. The firmest faith is in the fewest words the turtles cannot sing and yet they love. True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak they hear and see and sigh, and then they break.
Flow My Tears
Flow, my tears, fall from your springs. Exiled forever, let me mourn; where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings, there let me live forlorn.
Down vain lights, shine you no more. No nights are dark enough for those that in despair their last fortunes deplore. Light doth but shame disclose.
Never may my woes be relieved, since pity is fled; and tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days of all joys have deprived.
From the highest spire of contentment my fortune is thrown; and fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts are my hopes, since hope is gone.
Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell, learn to contemn light. Happy, happy they that in hell feel not the world’s despite.
Danzas Españolas, Op. 37: No. 2, Orientale: A work written originally for piano, and here transcribed for two guitars, Granados’ 2nd Spanish dance lends itself to a guitar arrangement, with its expressive melodic passages and its harp-like accompaniments. The ‘orientale’ of the title is made apparent through Granados’ use of oriental scale material, combined with an influence from Spanish music.
Suite for Two Lutes: A quite beautiful and masterfully arranged piece of music, this lute suite presents a quiet, somewhat pastoral, and perceptively English side to early baroque music. Economical lines intersect and move apart, combine and contrast to create a work that falls within the confines of Baroque period, but still displays the relative minimalism, simplicity, and harmonic adventurousness of the Renaissance. As a side note, the composer of this piece, William Lawes, fought as a member of Charles I’s royalist army during the English Civil War; when he was shot and killed by a Parliamentary soldier, one Thomas Jordan included in Lawes’ epitaph a rather terrible pun referencing both Lawes’ name and the fact that he was killed combating those who denied the divine right of kings: “Will Lawes was slain by such whose wills were laws.” (from the Grove Music Online entry on William Lawes).
The Prince’s Toys: Suite for Guitar: This work pushes the guitar to the limits of its sonic capabilities, employing numerous extended techniques (ways of playing the instrument outside of the typical fingering and plucking of notes) to illustrate the various qualities of the toys in the title. It is also an explicitly programmatic work, telling a story that exists somewhere between a morality tale and a nightmare. The piece’s composer, Russian guitarist Nikita Koshkin, had this to say about the plot of The Prince’s Toys in an interview for the Classical Guitar Alive radio program: “the story is kind of a traditional idea, that a prince was playing with his toys, and he decided to burn them, because they are dead, not alive. And right in this moment they become alive, and they start to play the same games with him as he was playing with them, and quite ugly ones. And then in the end they all disappear, and there is only one puppet in the room: the puppet of the Prince.”
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