Johan Smith - J.S. Bach, Britten & Others - Guitar Works (2020) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The term ‘toccata’ is derived from the Italian ‘toccare’, ‘to touch’ and is a work intended as a display of manual dexterity, usually for a solo keyboard instrument. Within the toccata form other styles may be incorporated such as an adagio movement and a fugue. J.S. Bach wrote a number of toccatas for organ with a brilliant use of the pedals as well as the keyboard, to which the term ‘pedaliter’ has been applied. Toccatas for harpsichord, where the array of the organ’s pedals are absent, are regarded as ‘manualiter’, involving manuals only. The original composition was generically intended for strumento a tastiera (‘keyboard instrument’) and the present practice is to consider this work as intended for the harpsichord.

Toccata, BWV 914, taken from a group of seven Toccatas (BWV 910 to BWV 916), thus presents a virtuosic suite in four movements. The transcriber, Stefano Grondona, in an introductory note comments that ‘The realisation of Toccata, BWV 914 that we offer here has matured through several years of concert performances and a recording.’ He observes that the process of developing such a transcription ‘offers the results of our technical experimentation with guitar music that borders on the unplayable’. Nevertheless it is clear that when performed expertly, Toccata, BWV 914 in this arrangement sounds most idiomatic to the guitar.

The Toccata begins with a quietly understated movement leading to a very intricate contrapuntal movement marked Un poco allegro, a double fugue. In one of the early copies of the suite the Adagio carries the additional title of Praeludium. This Adagio is a complex work with much detailed filigree. The closing three-part fugue has become mysterious because of the discovery in a Naples manuscript of an anonymous Fugue with distinct similarities attributed to Benedetto Marcello. The Bach scholar, David Schulenberg, has commented however that Bach’s version is ‘more claveristic, somewhat more refined, and at the same time, more complex’.

Manuel Ponce (1882–1948) has been described as the founding father of 20th-century Mexican music. His pupil, Carlos Chávez (1899–1978) said of him: ‘It was Ponce who created a real consciousness of the richness of Mexican folk art.’ Segovia and Ponce met in Mexico in 1923, and from that time onwards the composer devoted himself to writing many pieces for the guitar, nearly all of them dedicated to Segovia. Of these compositions, which include preludes, suites, a concerto, variations, several sonatas, and works for guitar and harpsichord, Segovia has written: ‘Large or small, they are, all of them, pure and beautiful.’

Ponce, born in Fresnillo, Mexico, was also a distinguished concert pianist and conductor as well as a composer. He first learned the piano with his older sister, Josefina. After further studies in Mexico City he travelled to Europe in 1904 where he took composition lessons in Bologna with Enrico Bossi (1861–1925) and Cesare Dall’Olio (1849–1906), who was Puccini’s teacher. Later he studied in Berlin with the renowned pianist, Martin Krause (1853–1918), who in 1883 had performed for Liszt. Ponce returned to his homeland in January 1907 and taught the piano at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City. In 1912 he gave a concert of his own music including the first performance of his Piano Concerto. During this period he established his credentials as one of the central figures of the rising Mexican ‘nationalist’ school….

TRACKLIST

1. Johan Smith - Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (Arr. S. Grondona for Guitar): Toccata
2. Johan Smith - Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (Arr. S. Grondona for Guitar): Un poco allegro
3. Johan Smith - Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (Arr. S. Grondona for Guitar): Adagio
4. Johan Smith - Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (Arr. S. Grondona for Guitar): Fuga. Allegro
5. Johan Smith - Diferencias Sobre la Folía de España y Fuga
6. Johan Smith - Concertino for Guitar
7. Johan Smith - Nocturnal After John Dowland, Op. 70
8. Johan Smith - Les reflets de l'obscurité: III. Sables stellaires



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