My New Landscape : 4 Pieces for Guitar by Giorgio Signorile. Published by UT Orpheus. CH344
It’s a safe bet we all love out instrument and before we started to apply ourselves seriously, lots of us would doodle around making arpeggiated patterns based on a chord. Over time we decide to structure our meanderings and seek out a teacher. But some people manage to turn these fretboard explorations into something of greater consequence. Giorgio is one of them.
His New Landscape creations are of this ilk, but take another step into considered and often rather beautiful pastures which guitarists will find refreshing and accessible.
Invisible Dances is the first of the four. A 12|8 ‘p-m-i-a-p-m-i-a‘ pattern in first position manages to overturn stones we didn’t know existed. Just when we thought there was nothing more to say down there, Giorgio uncovers new harmonies and added-note sonorities. As the piece progresses we depart first position and a fuller exploitation of the fretboard takes us as high as fret 19 before the note values are halved and we are off on a near-virtuosic canter which will leave the accomplished guitarist smiling. The fingering is logical, the thinking is clear and the effect is fun.
If we believed that all syncopations in 4|4 time had been over-used, then Favela, the second piece, finds a new rhythm which I have to confess sticks in the mind after playing. “Catchy” is an understatement. Once again, Giorgio finds new flowers on what we thought was a well-trodden path. I thought this was great.
The third piece Febbraio ’97 is a campanella E Major affair replete with major 7ths and augmented 4ths and some surprising harmony in the piu lento section. This reviewer found himself playing bars a few times over, not to perfect them, but to enjoy the chords contained therein. It’s that kind of book where we think “Ooh, that’s nice” and say “Yes” to a second biscuit.
The finale is My New Landscape, the same as the overall title of the collection. Giorgio uses a detuned guitar but writes the music on two staffs. The lower staff invites us to forget the detuned guitar and play the piece as if it is in standard tuning. The upper staff reproduces the musical result. It’s like a sort of tablature for reading players and I thought this shorthand approach was a super idea. Once again, it’s a gentle exploration of the sorts of sonorities that DADGAD players enjoy (although this is not DADGAD tuning) and there’s a mesmerising quality to the sound he conjures.
So, from a guitaristic point of view, this book is a big success. Compositionally, it proves more problematic. Maybe these four pieces are not meant to be performed consecutively; maybe the idea is we extract one or two for our audiences to hear. When they are all played together, the textural predictability begins to wear, even though Giorgio has found some lovely and refreshing sounds.
The ABA structural device is an over-employed formula and I did think a few of them were longer than they merited. One of the arts of great writing is to know when to stop; shortening these pieces would have made the effect stronger and offer a greater cohesiveness. That’s a personal view of course, as all reviews must be, and there may be guitarists willing to give the book the benefit of the compositional doubt which I eschewed.
To sum up, these are beautifully written and presented new compositions for the guitar which will thrill some guitarists and it is obvious that Giorgio knows his instrument exceedingly well. Despite my misgivings around it’s musical content, there is enough fun to be had from the textures that many will overlook the problems and just enjoy what Giorgio does: the utter beauty of a classical guitar.
Colin Tommis, December 2020