Carlos César Cunha - TWO WORLDS

I-Tunes:

Carlos César Cunha - guitarra

"I dedicate this CD to my father, the person who gave me the utmost motivation and cherish towards music and guitar, pushing, encouraging, and helping me to overcome any negative feelings I was experiencing.

I wish to thank my family, especially my wife, for all the understanding and support, once to make a record it implies a lot of time away from home, mainly during inconvenient hours. The family support was essential, in particular for the dedication granted to my children Cesar and Margarida, aged 3 and 18 months, who for this reason need to be supported. Meantime, I take the opportunity to apologize to my children for my absence, but I made this record also for them. 

I appreciate the symbolic, nevertheless important, support of the sponsors - Câmara Municipal Póvoa Varzim (Municipality), Associação Pró-Música da Póvoa de Varzim (Musical Association) and Colégio de Nossa Senhora do Rosário (Porto) (College).

I am also grateful for the commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism of Nuno Silva, the sound technician, together with the other team that comprises the Publisher, for their involvement in the whole recording process. 

Finally, I state that I will always be thankful to my Prof. Artur Caldeira and José Pina, who motivated and influenced my vision over the guitar, the music and life in general, during different stages of my life. These Prof. widely exceeded their function as mere teachers, for their dedication.\" Carlos César Cunha

Silvius Leopold Weiss

1 Fantasia - ré menor / D minor 02’40’’

Carlos Seixas

Sonata - lá menor / A minor (S. K. Nº 74)

2 1 – Allegro 03’30’’

3 2 – Minuet 00’50’’

Domenico Scarlatti

4 1 – Andante cantabile - Lá Maior / A major (K209/L428) 04’00’’

5 2 – Allegro - Lá Maior / A major (K208/L238) 05’54’’

Johan Sebastian Bach

6 Chaconne - ré menor / D minor (2ª Partita) 13’08’’

Dusan Bognanovic

Levantine Suite

7 1 – Prelude (Rubato – molto expressivo) 00’58’’

8 2 – Dance (Moderato, Ritmico) 01’54’’

9 3 – Cantilena (Rubato – quasi un recitativo) 02’06’’

10 4 – Passacaglia 02’24’’

11 5 – Postlude (Rubato – molto expressivo) 01’07’’

Fernando Lopes-Graça

12 1 – Prelúdio 01’57’’

13 2 – Baileto 02’41’’

Leo Brouwer

Elogio de la Danza

14 1 – Lento 02’50’’

15 2 - Obstinato 02’28’’

Gerald Garcia

Five Celtic Pieces

16 1 – Rune of the Weaver 02’38’’

17 2 – Cuan ag Eirigh 02’14’’

18 3 – Tiarna Mhaigheo 00’57’’

19 4 – Airde Chuain 01’26’’

20 5 – Port ui Mhuirgheasa 01’03’’

Total: 56’07’’ 

Details:

Two worlds representing 2 époques, Baroque and Modern (XXth century). Based on a selection of authors/pieces that, despite sharing the same timing, reveal different resources, approaches and musical speeches, which features distinguish them among the other authors. 

BAROQUE

We must be aware that all these pieces from the baroque period are originals for other instruments and transcribed for guitar. A transcription becomes undoubtedly a kind of “rupture” with the original version. A “rupture”, once the work is subjected to a new approach, limited to the sound possibilities of the instrument for which it was transcribed. 

Therefore, we should not be tempted to make ourselves familiar with the original, but to face it as a renewed work, if you prefer. Baroque is a statement period in terms of toned and instrumental music, the genesis of the counterpoint and imitative writing, for excellence. It becomes the privileged époque for the transcription exercise, once it allows the articulation of the same musical sentence in different ways, with no lack of quality, explaining therefore the transcription of the same work for so unlike instruments. 

From all the authors/pieces that I have selected for this CD, the Sonata (original for harpsichord) by Carlos Seixas presents a more festive musical structure and approach, with an energy reminding us Antonio Vivaldi and a strong trend of Italian Baroque. With a tonal path, harmonic progressions and imitative redundancy, peculiarity of a more popular and familiar baroque towards a great audience, with the particularity of being a sonata with a small and contrast Minueto, it shines and reveals a striking energy that the “false” simplicity of the music grants to those who listen. 

The sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (original for harpsichord) convey a harmonic density and complexity, which introduce a remarkable and dramatic weight in the musical speech. Daring for the époque, with unlike harmonic progressions, includes repeated chromatism in his pieces. This author stands in a group of composers that look for a vanguard dissonance, as an expressing element. 

The Fantasy of Leopold Weiss (original for lute) is a small piece with a beautiful effect. Described with idiomatic features of a string instrument, such as the melodic guidance with shorter periods, full of slipped notes, highest echo points, with ornamentation also different from the key music. Though this piece does not have the same weight for the guitar repertoire as other pieces transcribed from lute, such as 4 Bach suites, it sounds to belong to a more “romantic” trend of baroque, where we can find several authors less known. Mostly due to some authors as Johann Sebastian Bach, who belongs to a small number of genius, that at their époque performed in quantity and quality in such way that they are confused with the period they lived in, monopolizing the attention for being a phenomenon. 

The Chaconne by Johann Sebastian Bach (original for violin) emblematic piece of the author, shows the simplicity of the same written and re-written cadence almost as a written “exercise” approaching a theme with variations, and on the other hand reveals a formal and aesthetic sense ahead for his époque. The musical speech becomes stronger each cadence up to the highest level and reborns with simplicity alike the initial one, repeating the process till the end of the piece. The technical maturity and aesthetic sense placed him in the prow of the baroque, also due to his huge choir work and for his dominium of the harmonic language and counterpoint. In Bach work no voice or register distribution happens by chance and this piece was transcribed for several instruments, all different, becoming each time a new piece and not less rich in effect, only different. He is an author that transcribes, himself, some of his works for different instruments.

MODERN – XXth CENTURY 

In the modern repertoire of the XXth Century I tried, alike with the baroque, to choose pieces/authors with different approaches. Some of them are included and represent important trends on this period which for their features influence the current approach of the composer, all over the world.

The “Celtic Dances” by Gerald Garcia are small dances with opposite temperaments, constructed with a strong and assumed folklore inspiration. A predominant trend in the guitar repertoire that remind us the role of the guitar in folklore of several countries, especially in Latin ones.

An original piece for guitar and violin, adapted to solo guitar, highlighting the strong cultural Celtic tradition, full of motherly and melodic lullabies, march times, pedals drew in the low register, reminding the bagpipes, alive and contagious rhythms, to which we associate dancing and tape dance, typical in the festive occasions. 

Leo Brouwer, on his turn explores in this “Elogio de la Danza” some rhythms, effects and environment, highly energetic, that are opposed to more expressive moments, granting to this small piece opposite environments easily melted. Most of this results because the author repeats motives and rhythm sequences in different harmonic contexts, assuming some motive and imitative flair that make the piece easier to understand in terms of audition. Undoubtedly, also because he is an interpreter, he is aware of the instrument capacities and can take advantage of its limits. He is a composer who became with his reportoire a very regular and recurrent presence in the scene of the current guitar education, due to his didactic and methodical approach, very clear in technical terms, that efficiently and progressively inserts the dissonance and other elements unaware to the rules of tonal musical limits, catapulting the student to the modern music. 

“Levantine Suite” by D. Bogdanovic is a piece with scordatura (six string in F) that develops the resulting resonance, i.e the guitar gains more resonance, in registers that normally do not sustain the sound and the composer brightly searches for support in all the high and suspended points. Like Brouwer, he is a composer/interpreter used to handle the instrument and explore its capacities. It is a Neo-mode Suite of peculiar sound once it mixes ancient music with sonority that reminds traditional vernacular music of the author (Balcãs) and also a strong jazz influence. We speak about a complex piece in rhythm terms, because it grows into an irregular constructing process, with constant pulse changes, playing with the mixture of the ternary and binary (3+2), including many suspensions, making impossible to be aware of regular pulse standards. He is an author also known for the importance given to improvise, highly influenced by jazz, since the irregularity and lack of pulse, previously mentioned, is also frequent in a style that many musicians adopt in “Free jazz”. 

Lopes Graça, among several pieces still unknown and less played, composed this “Preludio e Baileto” and alike Brouwer pieces, has an atonal approach but it results with a completely different dimension, because with no doubts, he is an author that composes to piano and not to guitar. Curiously, both lived under dictatorship regimes, but they are from completely different generations and realities. Lopes Graça never resigned to the political system in forcement and his rebellious ideology, behaviour and live philosophy, can be heard through his music. As far as rhythm is concerned it is a rich piece, not with the idiomatic effects an in “Elogio de la Danza”, but with harmonic and rhythmic ostinatos, that reinforce a thick and dissonant language. It seems to print some “hardness” in rythm and sonority, almost as a way of marching against a system he fought all his life. At the same time he is able to create melancholic and bucolic environments that are almost like mirrors of the artist soul with a higher intellectual level, who lived and composed with perseverance and passion, as an outsider of a country drawn in a prevailing ignorance of the dictatorship.

POST SCRIPTUM

In each of these “Two Worlds” I included a Portuguese author, mainly due to the age and experience that pushed me to valuate, more and more, what is genuine and Portuguese, and as a tribute to those who dedicated their life to art, in the past. I would like to include, in future works, young composers that are emerging from several musical schools, and whose music I would like to see more played, recorded, or at least broadcasted. 

In a difficult scenario that drags musicians, publishers, into a disadvantageous economical-reality, and also because I held the position of Professor as well as musician (as many other colleagues of the artistic education in Portugal, with the implied sacrifice in time management) this CD gains a more special “taste” and therefore I also hope that my students will feel motivated with this CD to work even more and better in the future. 

Finally, the inaccuracies that the most strained ear will certainly recognize occur mainly because I am only used to play in public and not recording, always playing in the limits of the instrument volume. It is my first solo classical record and I am aware that I chose a bold and ambitious repertoire. I must draw your attention to the fact that I intend to explore the limits of the guitar, with the main concern focused on the volume, bright and other elements of the technique/interpretation that make it hard to withdraw the issuance noises, specific of the guitar and impossible to disguise during the recording, without jeopardizing the interpretation and vitality that the works/pieces in question have and deserve, in my opinion.

I learned a great deal during the whole recording process. I became more aware of the approaches and possibilities of the current means, that I completely ignored and for that reason, I feel that I have improved in professional terms.

Carlos César Cunha

(Translation: Manuela Ferreira)

Ref.: NUM 1151