With a series of extraordinary chamber concerts, the “Ohrid Summer” festival, this year in its sixty-second edition, only confirms its long-standing mission – promoting top musical artists from all over the world. The concert by the Montenegrin Guitar Duo was a special occasion, where the audience that completely filled the church “St Sofia” enjoyed a particularly inspired performance by the guests from Montenegro – Goran Krivokapić and Danijel Cerović. These are two extremely established artists with rich solo careers and notable teaching posts in several European music centres. And their recital for “Ohrid Summer” presented the duo to us as a distinctly harmonious chamber ensemble that has an impressive history of concert experience.
The guitar duo’s programme was an excellent choice, serious and at the same time “summer seductive” enough to present a convincing performance to the Ohrid audience. First of all, it should be emphasised: we heard two masterful arrangements – Bach’s sixth English Suite in D minor for harpsichord, in an arrangement by Goran Krivokapić and Danijel Cerović, and Astor Piazzolla’s Troileana Suite, originally for a jazz ensemble , arranged by Brazilian guitarist Sergio Assad.
There is an organic connection between Bach’s English and French suites and the traditional early baroque dance suites played by French lutenists. Hence, the soundworld created by the guitar duo in their performance of the English Suite moved between the related colours of archaic lute, baroque harpsichord and classical guitar, especially suitable in the acoustic space of our ancient church. And every time you listen to the sixth Suite in D minor, you are reminded anew of the timeless genius of Bach’s music. In each of the eight movements, the guitarists brought out the varied characters and dance moods with solid technical precision and attention to detail. The two-part Prelude consists of an organpunk intro and a demonically long fugue in the style of perpetuum mobile, and their performance was concentrated, compact and full of impressive technical clarity in the fast high-pitched passages (Goran Krivokapić), originally written for a keyboard instrument, which undoubtedly makes them more challenging to perform on the guitar. In a similar, even more ferocious manner, they played the “devilishly wild” 12/16 Gigue, at a very fast tempo, appropriate for a powerful finale. The three-part counterpoint in the Allemande, on the other hand, skilfully arranged for two guitars, sounded restrained and majestic, against the dancing, playful Gavottes in D minor and D major. The Courante had a fluid, uninterrupted and consistently soft colour, which highlighted Danijel Cerović carrying the bass line, and the precision of his playing. I will also single out the performance of the poetic Sarabande. The two guitarists transported us to the world of early-seventeenth-century lutenists with this old-style piece.
With the measured rubato in the sumptuous arpeggios, we discovered the most expressive side of the rich musicality that these gifted artists evidently possess.
Not to be left out, the guitar duo extracted a very subtle spectrum of dynamic nuances from their instruments. It is important to note the finesse of their performance, because the English Suite in D minor is an outstanding composition, a Bach masterpiece (wonderful music by the way), and a masterful performance by the two guitars.
As an excellent counterpoint to the dynamic baroque music in the first part of the concert, we heard the Troileana Suite from 1975, dedicated to the famous Argentinian bandoneon player Aníbal Troilo – part of the fantastic oeuvre of Astor Piazzolla. After all, the ingenious improvisations of the baroque masters are the origin and inspiration for jazz in the twentieth century. The audience watched with pleasure the charming movements Bandoneon, Whisky, Zita and the spectacular Escolaso, in which the artists played with undisguised enjoyment, revealing a different side of their artistic taste. “Nuevo Tango” was full of free jazz harmonies.
Here we heard a completely relaxed interpretation with measured phrasing. Their pleasure in making music was visible, and the guitarists easily conveyed this to the audience.
In addition to the two transcriptions, as a finale we heard two “fire” dances, directly derived from traditional flamenco – “Dance of the miller” and the famous, seductive “Dance of the fire ritual” by Andalusian composer Manuel de Falla. The guitarists boldly performed these arresting dances with distinctly-harmonised flamenco-style rhythms and strikingly sharp dynamic contrasts. But that was not the end of the concert.
Next, we heard an unusually-long encore, “The Circus Suite” by contemporary Italian guitarist and composer Carlo Domeniconi. It was a great ending, which gave the concert an extra cheerful and attractive tone. The collage of Spanish, Greek, Russian and recognisable circus themes, in an authentic interpretation, produced an excellent finale to this colourful concert.
The guitar is an instrument of intimacy, its appeal limited to a collected, gentle timbre, but in the hands of masters like Goran Krivokapić and Danijel Cerović, you can experience all the splendour of colours hidden by the six strings.
The Montenegrin Guitar Duo’s performance was another concert pearl of the Ohrid Summer festival.
Loosely translated from Macedonian.