Thursday, November 26, 2015

Patrick Higgins, Bachanalia

Patrick Higgins is an excellent and also I suppose a brave classical guitarist. Brave because he has recorded a worthy selection-arrangement of JS Bach's works for classical guitar and electronic enhancement. Bachanalia (Telegraph Harp 009) is the resultant album.

He is brave because the purists out there will no doubt be poo-pooing this sort of thing. It is essentially some wonderfully alive performances of Bach favorites for guitar which are then variably subject to digital delay and echo, so that you get the essence of the guitar performances and their extension or soundscaping.

I might find it slightly distracting if this music wasn't something so universally familiar (to me anyway) that the extensions did not take away from what you hear as much with internal memory as in real-time. It is Bach in a dream, you might say. And that dream does not subtract from the awakened experience you have and will encounter many times. The musical effect is at times like music you hear in the memory and how the mind can present it to the musical self as a thing extended outward.

If Higgins wasn't so effective and wonderfully bright in his initial renderings I suppose this would also be less interesting to me. But that is not so. He rings out the music with an artistry that is not to be denied.

In the end I find this album a real delight. Even my long-time partner liked it, and she to me is the bellwether of non-professional opinion.

And so I do recommend this to you strongly.

No comments:

Post a Comment