(++++) PLUCKED AND STRUMMED PLEASANTRIES

J.K. Mertz: Elegie für die Guitare; Bardenklänge—excerpts; Fantaisie Hongroise; Schubert’sche Lieder—excerpts. Petra Poláčková, guitar. Bridge Records. $16.99.

Music for Guitar by Lennox Berkeley, Aloÿs Fornerod, Pierre de Breville, Fernande Peyrot, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Henri Martelli, Raymond Petit, and Cyril Scott. Matthew Slotkin, guitar. Summit Records. $12.99.

     Given the excellence of guitar music by composers such as Paganini, Giuliani, Fernando Sor, Ferdinando Carulli, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the tremendously engaging and impressive playing by guitarists such as Segovia, Bream, Parkening, Romero, and John Williams, it is surprising that solo-guitar CDs are not more common. The good news is that as a result, the ones that do appear tend to be of remarkably high quality and to feature music that is as charming and enjoyable as it is comparatively unknown. That is certainly the case with the new Bridge Records disc devoted to works by J.K. (Johann Kaspar) Mertz (1806-1856). Mertz was the first major guitarist/composer to apply the techniques and approaches of 19^th-century virtuoso piano music to the guitar, including in a trilogy of complex fantasias inspired by Liszt’s piano music. The pieces chosen by Petra Poláčková are not quite at the difficulty level of those three, but they are nevertheless quite clearly influenced by composers such as Mendelssohn, Chopin and, specifically in the case of the Bardenklänge, Schumann. There are 15 of these “sounds of the bards” in all, 13 published during Mertz’s lifetime (in 1847 and 1850) and two added later by a publisher. Poláčková plays eight of these character pieces (not in the order in which Mertz presented them), and all are charming, moving and often quite remarkable in sound: the opening of An Malvina, for example, is distinctly piano-like. The remarkable aural contrasts among the works show Mertz to be a composer with consummate understanding of the guitar’s capabilities, and Poláčková does a fine job of highlighting the variegated moods and technical requirements of these pieces. The speedy Capriccio and Unruhe, for example, are just as effective in their way as the quiet and thoughtful An die Entfernte and very sparely harmonized Gondoliera are in theirs. The other Mertz work on this CD that is tied strongly to a specific composer is Schubert’sche Lieder, a set of six Mertz arrangements of Schubert songs, of which Poláčková plays just four (one of the few disappointing things about this disc is that neither Bardenklänge nor Schubert’sche Lieder is heard in full). Mertz’s understanding of Schubert’s moods and the lyrical beauty of his themes comes through clearly in the Schubert’sche Lieder, which Mertz decorates with intriguing guitar flourishes while he ensures that the underlying melodic material remains always recognizable. Among the pieces heard here, the sweetness of Liebesbotschaft and expressive warmth of Ständchen are especially notable. Poláčková's lovely playing – on a nine-string romantic guitar made in 2014, based on a model from 1840 – is also apparent in Elegie für die Guitare, an expansive and serious work, and in Fantaisie Hongroise (the first of Trois Morceaux pour la Guitarre, Op. 65), whose themes and rhythms bear direct comparison to Liszt’s in some of his distinctly Hungarian-influenced works. Mertz’s music is uniformly well-made, lies and sounds very well on his chosen instrument, and in Poláčková's hands offers listeners an aural journey thoroughly packed with delight.

     The works are more varied and scarcely less interesting on a Summit Records release whose title – “Recovered Gems from the Andrés Segovia Archive” – points directly to the provenance of the material and indicates what the eight composers on the CD had in common. In truth, though, the source of all this 20^th-century music matters less than the high quality of all the material that Matthew Slotkin performs with a combination of technical skill and stylistic understanding. Quatre pièces by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) is a work of warmth sprinkled with dissonance, with an especially welcome contrast between the third piece (Mouvement de Sarabande) and the energetic concluding one. Prélude, Op. 13, by Aloÿs Fornerod (1890-1965), has a pleasantly Bachian air about it, although its harmonies are clearly those of the 20^th century. Fantaisie by Pierre de Breville (1861-1949) requires some particularly adept finger work. Thème et variations by Fernande Peyrot (1888-1978) puts Slotkin through his paces with a series of vivid contrasts. Spiritual by Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936) is brief, bouncier than its title would indicate, and has some attractive rhythmic irregularities. Quatre pièces, Op. 32, by Henri Martelli (1895-1980), opens with a charmingly old-fashioned dance, continues with an attractive moto perpetuo that insists on interrupting itself, slows down for a bit of thoughtfulness, then rushes to a brightly animated conclusion featuring some complex fingerings. Sicilienne by Raymond Petit (1893-1976) is an extended, moody work that carefully explores the guitar’s emotive side. And the Sonatina by Cyril Scott (1879-1970) uses traditional three-movement form very effectively: the first movement has a stop-and-start quality, the second is rhythmically meandering and includes some distinctly unusual harmonic touches, and the third has an ostinato quality mixed with attractively insistent themes. None of these composers will likely be familiar to many listeners, but given the fact that solo-classical-guitar recordings are comparatively uncommon, one further element of rarity is, if anything, an additional fillip of enjoyment for this very well-played, convincingly programmed disc – which clearly demonstrates that there is a great deal of very fine, very enjoyable solo-guitar music that has yet to be explored, and there are some first-rate guitarists who, happily, seem determined to explore it.