Brighton Year-Round 2024
St Nicholas Emmanuel Sowicz Guitar Recital September 11th 2024
Emmanuel Sowicz
Genre: Live Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Emmanuel Sowicz is one of the most talented guitarists to arrive here at St Nicholas, winner of the London International Guitar Competition. British Chilean, he starts with a Bach lute suite but soon moves south.
A consummate guitarist already marked – by many – for greatness.
Review
Emmanuel Sowicz is one of the most talented guitarists to arrive here at St Nicholas, winner of the London International Guitar Competition. British Chilean, he starts with a Bach lute suite but soon moves south.
Sowicz’ sound world is one of rapt quiet, perfectly attuned to a church where the slightest ping registers. His repertoire here is all contemplative, rarely rising to mezzo forte even in guitar terms. But profiling and an individual response to each composer’s sonance is strongly in evidence.
The Bach Prelude Fugue and Allegro BWV998 (originally in E flat major) is a beguiling even disarming work with an open Prelude fluid and running, with a Fugue that again builds rather than stuns with a limited lure palette, and leads into an attractive Allegro that swerves its way through the dominant D major in a rippling and satisfying finale. Lasting her around 13 minutes, it’s a substantial, and for Bach, still slightly elusive piece demanding more time with all his lute works.
Renowned Paraguayan virtuoso Augustine Barrios (1885-1944) born exactly 200 years after Bach in fact uses the framework of BWV998 in his 10-minute La Cathedral in the Preludio ‘Saudade’ and Allegro Someone the procession in and exit from the church. An Andante Religioso is affecting as the imposing Preludio but the stately but tuneful Allegro is finest of all.
Venezuelan Antonio Lauro (1917-86) is another composer who’s beginning to gain recognition in the UK. He specialised in Venezuelan Waltzes and these two with women’s names (Maria Carolina and Carora) frames lullaby or Cancion de Cuma entitled Ana Florencia. These are subtle, even slightly tenebrous pieces that make no apparent demands but in fact repay ken attention, wandering into a few half lights. The finale again is particularly memorable.
Again it lasts a rapt 10 minutes and you feel South American music has moved on here subtly: though in fact there’s been a revolution in music as in much politics, since. The guitar though registers all this through a glacial understanding of metamorphosis.
Finally Violeta Parma was a fine composer, indirectly a victim of the Pinochet coup. Her songs and transposed pieces like this one Gracias a la Viola is rhythmically quiet but insistent and melodically memorable. A quietly soaring encore from a composer we need to hear more of from a consummate guitarist already marked – by many – for greatness.
