Review: MELBOURNE GUITAR QUARTET AND ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA – ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 15th July 2023.

The members of the Melbourne Guitar Quartet not only performed their own concert, but they were also tutors to the many young players during the five days that they spent as members of the Adelaide Guitar Festival Orchestra, AGFO, rehearsing for theirs. This is the sort of thing that makes this Festival so important. Festival Artistic Director, Slava Grigoryan, even joined the orchestra, sitting unobtrusively at the back.

The effervescent Dr. Paul Svoboda conducted the Orchestra in the first hour of the evening, leading them through a range of numbers, opening with an arrangement of The Joker, from the 1965 Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley musical, The Roar of the Greasepaint - the Smell of the Crowd. This is the ninth year at the Festival for this popular event.

There was a change of pace for the atmospheric piece, Reverie, by local guitarist/composer, Ian Seaborn, who was also on stage. A number of tutors always sit in to support the young musicians and, no doubt, that support was welcomed for the next piece, Take Five, composed in 1959 by alto saxophonist, Paul Desmond, for the Dave Brubeck Quartet. They handled the 5/4 time signature with ease.

Next came Outsight , the second movement of Dr. Svoboda’s own somewhat complex composition, Points of View. It was a very busy piece for the bass guitarist, presenting quite a challenge for his first time with AGFO. Some years back, two of Dr. Svoboda’s sixteen-year-old high school students co-wrote a very fine duet and that, in an arrangement as a sort of double concerto, was next. After thanking everybody involved, he closed with Gliding Over Garner's Beach, the third movement from his Life’s a Beach suite. Huge rounds of applause showed that the audience appreciated the musical selections, the hard work of the members of the Orchestra, and of the ongoing commitment of Dr. Svoboda to this invaluable enterprise.

Following the interval, the Melbourne Guitar Quartet, Jeremy Tottenham, Benjamin Dix, Daniel McKay, and Michael McManus, took to the stage with a wonderfully varied programme, opening with an intricate arrangement of Fratres, by Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt. Philip Houghton’s Opals, in three movements, Black Opal, Water Opal, and White Opal, a moving work for four standard classical guitars, quickly followed.

They also presented works variously using a bass guitar, with a body about the size of a ‘cello, a baritone guitar, and a treble, or requinto guitar. This not only gives a greater range of notes, but also adds different timbres to the music. They then played arrangements of the first and final movements from the String Quartet No. 3 ‘Mishima’, by Philip Glass, using the baritone and treble guitars with two standard guitars. Arrangements of works, particularly of string quartets, were a common occurrence in the early days of the guitar quartet, until composers began writing specifically for that ensemble.

Robert Davidson’s River and Cliffs were next, written specifically for that full quartet of bass, baritone, standard, and treble, displaying that combination to full advantage. Then, to close the performance, they turned to the very first composition written for that combination, Winter in the Forgotten Valley, by Nigel Westlake.

It goes without saying that the musicianship was of the highest order, and the greatly varied selections showed off the many facets of the guitar’s capabilities, in the hands of such exceptional players. Extended applause concluded a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours.

Photography, Brett Scapin.