The Memory Garden: Guitar Music from England
Jack Hancher (guitar)
rec. 2024, St James Church, South Repps, Norfolk, UK
Reviewed as a 24-bit/96kHz download
Deux-Elles DXL1206 [52]
The Memory Garden is an exciting programme of English music, old and new, played with incredible sensitivity and intelligence by one of Britain’s finest young guitarists. The album is bookended with the music of John Dowland, beginning with one of Dowland’s preludes and ending with Benjamin Britten’s epic Nocturnal, which is a set of inverse variations on Dowland’s song, “Come heavy sleep”. Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for Guitar gives a wonderful segue into two new pieces by Laura Snowden and Dani Howard, both of which make a superb and compelling contribution to the guitar repertoire. This is Jack Hancher’s debut recording. Asked about his choice of music for the CD Hancher replied “Well, first and foremost, it’s fantastic repertoire – amongst the best we have. It forces you as a performer to get everything out of the instrument, especially in its range of dynamics and colours.”
Hancher was described by Gendai Guitar Magazine as a “poet and a painter, colouring sounds out of the guitar as if his imagination and the guitar were one”. In 2022, he won the prestigious Gold Medal of the Royal Overseas League Competition at London’s Wigmore Hall, becoming just the third guitarist to win the award. This was preceded in 2021 by a tour of several European Guitar Festivals as a EuroStrings Artist. In 2020, he won a series of awards at various guitar competitions, including First Prize at both the Zagreb Guitar Festival Competition and the Plovdiv GuitArt Festival Competition and in 2021, he was awarded Second Prize at the Altamira International Guitar Competition. He has performed across Europe including with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Christian Karlsen, and has given Masterclasses at Conservatoires around Europe, including at the Royal College of Music, London and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff. He is an Augustine Strings Artist.
John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as “Come, heavy sleep”, “Come again”, “Flow my tears”, “I saw my Lady weepe”, “Now o now I needs must part”, and “In darkness let me dwell”. His instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and with the 20th century’s early music revival, has been a continuing source of repertoire for lutenists and classical guitarists. Hancher has chosen three delightful pieces by Dowland. In the CD notes he says “Dowland I came to when I was at conservatoire, and it’s more intimate music, which suits the way I like to play”. The pieces are Praeludium, P.98 which is a short gentle piece. Fantasia, P.1 which is played clearly in a relaxed style where Hancher manages the changing dynamics well and Forlorne Hope Fancy, P.2, a slow, gracious piece subtly played. It is a great choice as opener to show us Hancher’s sensitive, virtuosic playing.
Fantasy for Guitar, Op 107 by English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold was composed in 1971 and consists of seven movements: I. Prelude, II. Scherzo, III. Arietta, IV. Fugetta, V. Arietta, VI. March, VII. Postlude. Edited by Julian Bream in 1971. Arnold’s other guitar works, all written for Bream, include Serenade for Guitar and Strings, Op 50 (1955) and Guitar Concerto, Op 67 (1959).
As with many Bream commissions, he worked with reputable composers of the era that were renowned in the greater musical world. Arnold worked in a variety of genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral, brass and wind bands. He wrote for theatre, was commissioned by Royal Ballet numerous times, and wrote two operas and a musical. He scored more than a hundred films, including The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) for which he won an Oscar.
Of all the Bream pieces, the Arnold Fantasy features more techniques that suit Bream’s playing than any other. As Craig Ogden, the classical guitarist’ stated, the two shared a mutual love of jazz and spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to fit Arnold’s style onto the guitar in an idiomatic way. The piece includes nearly every favoured Bream technique including: chords with high harmonics, tambura and chords that require the player to drag the index finger and thumb across the strings as well as a variety of specified tonal colours. Asked about the piece, Hancher said, “It’s not as widely played as Britten’s Nocturnal, but I think it offers something very different. There are more light-hearted moments and more playfulness in the Arnold.”
The Fantasy for guitar, Op 107 consists of seven short linked sections which were expertly crafted for the skill of Julian Bream. The first is a Prelude dominated by a three-note repeated motif, falling then rising, on top of which appear a series of sweeping, majestic chords, it’s played very capably by Hancher. The second is a scherzo in six-eight time with chords in groups of three below rapid repeated notes, Hancher delivers this section for us in a colourful, confident style. The third section is an Arietta with a typical Arnold three-four melody, played softly and gently giving it the feeling of a song. The fourth section is a brief energetic Fugue played with some flair, this is then interrupted by the fifth, another Arietta whose listlessness is interrupted in the middle by five sinister chords, played very gently with great sensitivity. The penultimate movement is a March where the guitar cleverly creates a snare-drum effect that highlights the syncopations in the preceding section. It is really well played and has a real sense of a March. Asked how he produced the snare drum effect, Hancher responded, “You create the sound by pulling the sixth string over the fifth so they’re crossed over then both strings are struck by the thumb in the right hand – it’s a good stamina test for the left hand!” The final movement, the Postlude, takes us back to the music of the opening. You can find out more about Malcolm Arnold here.
The first of the modern pieces, The Memory Garden,is composed by Laura Snowden who is a British-French classical guitarist and composer. She is widely regarded as one of the leading classical guitarists of her generation since being handpicked by Julian Bream to continue his legacy of performing new commissions by leading contemporary composers, including Julian Anderson and Olli Mustonen. She is quoted as saying in the CD booklet, “I have two wonderful grandmas, and this piece was written in honour of both of them”. The piece is nostalgic, childlike and played with great feeling. It slowly swells so that in the middle section you can imagine the fun and delight of a little girl exploring with her grandma; it ends gently and soothingly – it is a really lovely piece.
The second new piece You Don’t Have to Tell me Twice was written by Dani Howard. In 2017, she was selected by ClassicFM to write a new work celebrating the 25th anniversary of the classical music radio station. Written for orchestra, her piece Argentum was premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in September 2017. In the CD booklet she says, “ “You Don’t Have to Tell me Twice” for solo guitar was written for Jack Hancher, and features the many tones and colours he is able to produce from the instrument. The piece explores the idea of how the same thing, said in different ways, can in fact mean something very different”. Once again, it’s a slow reflective piece played elegantly and gracefully by Hancher; we can hear diverse tonal colours and like the rest of the CD the recording quality is excellent.
Completed in 1963, Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op 70 for solo guitar, is basically a set of variations on a song of John Dowland, “Come, Heavy Sleep” (No 20 in Dowland’s “First Book of Songs or Ayres of Four Parts,” published in 1597.) In Britten’s piece, the original theme is stated only at the conclusion of eight contrasting movements (variations). This unusual compositional format appears in two other Britten works: Lachrymae, for viola and piano, and the Third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello. The piece was premiered by the dedicatee, Julian Bream at the Aldeburgh Festival of 1964. Of the piece Hancher in the CD booklet says, “Nocturnal really does force you to get everything out of the guitar’s range of colour, and to be creative with that use of colour.”
The first movement marked “musingly” is dreamy, slow and ethereal, with a fantasy-like character; played by Hancher, it’s all over too soon. The two succeeding pieces, titled “Very agitated” and “Restless,” respectively, are lively and tense, with the latter less energetic, less driven, but more ominous and threatening. They both show that Hancher can manage energetic, frantic music as well as the more gentle reflective type; the latter piece is played with a compassionate sensitivity.
The fourth movement, “Uneasy,” maintains the nervous, dark mood with ponderous music that is stop go in nature. It has an eerie feeling to it. The next movement, “March-like,” despite its title, has a quirky pacing and clownish melody. It is followed by a movement marked Dreaming where we finally appear to be offered a break from the agitated manner of the previous variants, but it, too, gradually divulges a restless spirit, despite its slow pacing and ethereal character.
The seventh movement, “Gently rocking,” is full of energy with descending repeating notes that seem anxiously searching for something. The ensuing Passacaglia, at nearly five minutes, is the longest movement. Hancher brings a really austere feel to it; it is also, not surprisingly, the most multifaceted movement, but again the sense of restiveness prevails. The closing panel, “Slow and quiet,” continues without pause and at last presents a serene and tranquil mood. Here the spirit of Dowland is most evident in the simpler writing and songful character of the music. Once again, it is played sensitively with great feeling.
On first being introduced to Jack Hancher I was told that “He is a guitarist with a special sensitivity and depth”. Having had a very enjoyable time knowing his music better I totally agree with this description. This is his first album; I sincerely hope that it will not be his last.
Ken Talbot
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free.
Contents
John Dowland (c. 1563 – 1626)
Praeludium, P.98
Fantasia, P.1
Forlorne Hope Fancy, P.2
Malcolm Arnold (1921 – 2006)
Fantasy for Guitar, Op 107 (1971)
Laura Snowden (b. 1989)
The Memory Garden *
Dani Howard (b. 1993)
You Don’t Have To Tell Me Twice *
Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976)
Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op 70 (1963)
*First recordings
