Mirosław Drożdżowski - Polyphonic pieces for solo guitar

C. F. Hering - Capriccio Op. 18 nr 4 
J. Stamitz - Fuga (Divertimento I) / Fugue (Divertimento I) / Fuge (Divertimento I) 
P. Nardini - Fuga A-dur / Fugue in D major / Fuge in D-Dur 
P. Nardini - Fuga a-moll / Fugue in d minor / Fuge in d-Moll 
P. Nardini - Fuga D-dur / Fugue in D major / Fuge in D-Dur 
P. Nardini - Fuga d-moll / Fugue in d minor / Fuge in d-Moll 
É. Sauret - Etiuda Op. 24 nr 20 / Etude Op. 24 No. 20 / Etüde op. 24 Nr. 20 

When I was still a student at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk in Professor Jan Paterek’s class, I recall the importance our teacher attached to the performance of polyphonic pieces.  In fact, every year the repertoire had to include at least one piece in this style. I remember that this was not an easy task for two main reasons. Firstly, playing polyphonic music in itself makes considerable demands on the performer. One has to attention to showing the entrances of the individual voices (often more than two), maintaining the right proportions between them and maintaining the overall form, which is always less obvious in polyphony compared to homophonic works. Anyone who has tapped into this type of music knows how difficult it is at a concert to ‚pull yourself together’ if there is a memory gap or the simplest textual mistake. The second difficulty was the meagre repertoire palette. We had, of course, works by J.S. Bach, old-time lutenists and a few contemporary offerings, the most memorable of which were the well-known Fugue by Leo Brouwer and Giuseppe Radole’s little-known but still proposed Ricercar by Professor Ricercar. Today, of the originals, we have Alexander Tansman’s magnificent newly found Passacaglia, but still typically polyphonic works are not in the ‚land of plenty’. Hence the idea of our acclaimed composer and arranger Mr Mirosław Drożdżowski to enrich the repertoire with valuable items from the circle of composers writing mainly for violin from the 18th and 19th centuries, immediately caught my attention. The names of violinist-composers known rather to connoisseurs of music appear here. However, after trying to play or listen to these works, they do not seem to belong to the so-called second league of composers. These pieces captivate with their melodic beauty and imaginative and logical structure of content. What’s more, they benefit from being performed on our instrument, just like Bach’s famous Chaconne which has many supporters who prefer performances guitar performances over the violin original. Of course, these are not technically easy pieces. It can be argued that they will be most appropriate for gifted students in the final years of secondary music schools and, of course, for students at academies. There is a high density of texture in many places, and intervals that require a considerable range of the left hand. Let us look, for example, at bars 13, 14 and 15 in P. Nardini’s fugue in A major, where the prima dialogues with the prima on the another string. Later, the situation repeats itself on other notes, but the problem of continuity remains. As for the tonalities used, the album’s author has adapted them to the guitar idiom. So four times we have the key without chromatic signsA minor, three times in D minor and in D major, the key of A major and G major and once in E minor. For the scale of difficulty, the pieces are relatively comfortable to play with some places on which one has to lean longer. 

       The most important beneficial feature is the exceptionally attractive selection of these pieces, which are not widely known. I expect that at least a few of them will find a prominent place in the repertoire of aspiring guitarists.

Zbigniew Dubiella