From Royal College of Music Annual Review
Incorporating the annual report and RCM magazine for the year ending July 31st, 1995

Brad Richter - Solo Guitar

Dance of the Harvest Fires
Harmon-E Records

The Etudes on this recording were composed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MMus degree in performance studies at the Royal College of Music.

This century has seen no lack of attention to the classical guitar, but many of the contributors to its growing repertoire have not been guitarists themselves, and have been less than intimately acquainted with the instrument’s true character. Consequently, much of the new music has failed fully to exploit the wider range of musical possibilities the guitar presents. This has been a real deficiency in the repertoire, since most guitarists naturally prefer to play music which shows an integration of musical and technical depth, and reflects a guitarist’s understanding of the instrument’s idiosyncrasies.

The contribution of guitar performer-composers though, such as Barrios, Brouwer, York and now Richter, has been excellent, and all these composers are featured on this recording. Barrios’ Vals op. 8, no. 4, Brouwer’s El Decameron Negro and York’s Sunburst, all make very enjoyable listening, and Richter demonstrates a strong sense of conviction as well as fun in his style of playing. The more dazzling virtuoso passages are handled with great precision--a characteristic in Richter’s technique which he uses most effectively in showing off some very exciting passages in his own compositions.

For me, these are the highlights of this recording. Richter’s compositions have that genuinely arresting quality of immediate appeal--music of a calibre that you simply can’t ignore. Many short pieces in the wider contemporary repertoire have drawn my attention in this way, but some of Richter’s pieces on this recording must surely rank among the best of these gems to have appeared in recent years.

It is not hard to hear the influence of Brouwer in Richter’s music, but there is no doubt about Richter’s originality. The Harvest is his main work here, being a set of three compositions--Dance of the Harvest Fires, The Shepherd’s Dream and Pasture at Dawn, but it is perhaps the shorter Etudes which display his most innovative writing. Two of these are featured on the recording, no 1 (Desire), and no 8 (Elation). They are from a series of eight Etudes, each descriptive of a human emotion, and the two featured on the recording are particularly notable for their skillful exploitation of innovative percussive and harmonic effects. A unique feature of these Etudes is their use of specified tone-color, notated in the printed music through the use of a system of symbols developed by Richter.

These original pieces succeed in being technically and musically integrated, in a way which would satisfy well the expectations of the most accomplished performer, and they require an advanced technique without straying into the realms of the obscure or esoteric. Richter’s work is therefore both rewarding to study and entertaining to hear.

Whether or not you would normally choose to listen to the twentieth century classical guitar repertoire, Richter’s Etude no 8 (Elation) is a gem not to be missed. I notice there is a small note on the sleeve stating that all music on the recording is for solo guitar--no overdubbing was used. When you hear Elation you’ll see why it was necessary to state this!

-Brian Capleton-