Music
Stefan Grasse
Cottier's Theatre, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
three stars
Glasgow's West End on Sunday afternoon was madness unleashed as the sun came out (the what?) while Mardi Gras-scale crowds swarmed through blocked streets and the area was gripped (and thumped) by very loud music spilling out of the ongoing festival, all of it generating a vivid carnival atmosphere and an immense buzz.
Yet just 300 yards away and up Hyndland Street, there was an oasis of quiet and calm in Cottier's Theatre, where the only noise (apart from my wrist alarm going off very vocally - apologies to performer and audience) was the intimate sound of an acoustic guitar speaking in classical tones. This was German guitarist Stefan Grasse paying homage to two of Scotland's finest composers, John Maxwell Geddes and the late Thomas Wilson, with a selection of the top-drawer music they wrote for guitar.
Wilson and Geddes were great friends and colleagues, yet each distinct in his approach to music and musical character. This was all reflected in Grasse's performance, though that lacked, for me, some decisiveness in its delivery, especially in Wilson's music. His Three Pieces for Guitar and the complex strands of his Soliloquy needed more needle-sharp precision, and the intellectual core of the Three Pieces more lucidity of purpose, something Wilson himself never lacked; though Grasse did catch the stillness of Wilson's Dream Music.
All of Geddes's pieces fared more characterfully, with beautiful lyricism in his Elegy, a heartfelt setting of an ancient tune, the awesome depth, solitude and soulfulness of his Callanish V, and a lovely dash of Romanticism to close, with his Nocturne, written for the son of a friend.
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