Roch Modrzejewski: Opera's guitar hero
With his virtuosic new recording of opera tunes, Poland's Roch Modrzejewski has revived a much-neglected corner of the guitar repertoire, says John Allison.
Fantasy: Young guitarist Roch Modrzejewski plays opera
By John Allison 19 May 2013
A century-and-a-half ago, a piano recital without some operatic paraphrase or potpourri would have been almost unthinkable. Such was the extent to which transcriptions dominated keyboard music. But then, of course, in an age before recordings, it was only through the intimacy of solo instruments and small ensembles that the great operatic and symphonic works could be disseminated to everyone. Discs and now downloads make all music available to anybody, anywhere, so it is hardly surprising that such arrangements have gone out of fashion.
A tendency to favour authenticity over recycled ideas has further undermined this vast repertoire, and these days snootiness is usually set aside only when it comes to Liszt’s staggeringly virtuosic operatic elaborations, some of them still counting as pinnacles of pianism.
But other instruments were used, too, as vehicles for the most popular operatic tunes of the day. With good reason, cellists still like to play Beethoven’s Variations on Bei Männern from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and flautists occasionally turn to Chopin’s early Variations on Non più mesta from Rossini’s La Cenerentola.
As a fascinating new recording by the young Polish guitarist Roch Modrzejewski, "Fantasias on Operas", reminds us, the classical guitar was also once considered an ideal medium for this form of operatic domestication.
Of the seven works he records, four are based on themes by Bellini, testimony to the haunting appeal of the Sicilian composer’s music, not to mention the guitar’s ability to sustain long bel canto lines. Modrzejewski’s sensitivity to colour, and the refined musicality of his phrasing, makes him an excellent re-interpreter of these operatic melodies, and he also has a brilliant technique when the inevitable virtuosic showing-off is required.
The centrepiece of his recording, appropriately enough, is Mauro Giuliani’s Variations on the Cavatina from Rossini’s Otello. Giuliani’s works – not least his freshly invigorating Concerto No.1 in A – form the core of 19th-century guitar repertoire, and six sets of his fantasias (Opp. 119-24) actually bear the title Rossiniane. This earlier set, Op. 101, is further evidence of his fondness for Rossini.
Bellini’s Norma and Il Pirata serve as the inspiration for the discs’s two opening works, both by the French guitar virtuoso Napoléon Coste; and other famous guitarist-composers such as Luigi Legnani and Giulio Regondi feature too. The Hungarian Johann Kaspar Mertz is represented with the premiere recording of a piece based on Donizetti’s Marino Faliero.
Dubbed the “Chopin of the guitar”, Kraków’s Jan Nepomuk de Bobrowicz also receives a premiere recording, with his Variations and Polonaise on a duet from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
The majestic Polish dance that rounds it off shows how this half-forgotten genre not only transcribed operatic tunes but transported them too. ~ telegraph
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