Arpeggione (2016): Something Special Two Times Over
David Leisner & Zuill Bailey
Up in the attic full of forgotten
instruments, the arpeggione at least made it into the pages of history in the
scores of Franz Schubert,
practically the only composer who dedicated a piece to this cross between
guitar and viola da gamba invented by his fellow Vienna countryman and luthier Johann Georg Stauffer. In 2016, it would
only occur to someone like David Leisner
and his 'chamber' guitar to revive that sonata and dedicate his new album to
featuring that old school glory of the six strings. Helping him out was none
other than Zuill Bailey, possibly
the premiere cellist in the world.
Neither Leisner nor Bailey are a
surprise. They are something special. On Arpeggione
-as if there could be any other title for the disk- there is a lot more than
just the ‘oddity’ of Sonata in A Minor
D.821 composed for the instrument and
piano during a cold, sad November in 1824. Leisner adapted the piano part to
his guitar and obviously left the bow to his partner.
Behind the exquisite performance
of Schubert's three movements hides
another real delight: Manuel de Falla and
his seven popular Spanish songs arranged by our pair of virtuosos into a more
than memorable instrumental version.
As if that wasn't enough, Leisner adds one of his original
compositions, Twilight Streams, that
takes us into the realm of contemporary music. An intriguing piece he finally
decided to record, but one where the guitar employs a code that escapes most
mere mortals like us. Certainly, the
people who enjoy it most have to be his students at the Manhattan School of
Music and colleagues at Guitar Plus, a select New York club for chamber music
lovers.
To return us to this side of the
universe, the end brings us back to the soothing calmness of chamber music with
adaptations of Leisner's much-admired Villa-Lobos,
Paganini… All told, more than an hour of a voyage where the pleasure of
listening is amplified by the pleasure of discovering once again the infinite
possibilities of Guitars Exchange's favourite instrument.
Leisner and Bailey have created a masterpiece with Arpeggione -the critical response is unanimous on that- that
reclaims the virtues of the ‘wood’ over the latest cutting edge materials and
electronic alchemy. It's a real slap on the back and accolade for the guitar in
the arduous terrain of 'serious' music -as if the other genres weren't tough
enough. The six strings have spent too
much time suffering from an inferiority complex in the realm of the piano and
violin. Electricity opened up many doors, but also closed others like the attic
of that Viennese luthier.
Like all the other candidates to
swell the ranks of our chapter of legends, Leisner
is also a living example of how to overcome the nightmare of every guitarist:
musician's dystonia (focal dystonia), a neurological disease that takes control
over your muscles, yet hardly anything is known about how that happens. He fell
victim to the disease in 1984, when he was 30, and had it for 12 years, until he cured himself completely in 1996. He won his first major prize as an
instrumentalist when he was 22, and also teaches the techniques to beat the
illness today.