Music / “Conciertos Destilados”. Andrew Blanch (guitar) and Roland Peelman (piano). At Wesley Music Centre, November 25. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

THIS was a very finely played concert from the unusual pairing of a classical guitar and piano. 

It was three concertos for guitar and piano with a “palate cleanser” (Peelman’s term) of a short piano work by Elena Kats-Chernin to give guitarist Blanch a short break between two of the concertos. 

It was an interesting choice of material in that two of the concertos, “Antarctica” by Nigel Westlake and the “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo were originally written for guitar and orchestra, with the orchestra scores reduced to a piano for this concert series. 

The third major piece, a new work commissioned by Blanch from Chilean-Australian composer Daniel Rojas, simply entitled “Guitar Concerto”, was, I think, written for guitar and piano, though that was not fully explained during the concert.

The concert opened with “Antarctica” and it became quickly obvious that the performers struggled at times to find a balance between the two instruments. When the pianoforte played “piano” all was good, but when the piano was being “forte” the guitar disappeared. It is an intriguing work and the orchestral version utilises a lot of tone colours from the orchestral instruments, which don’t have the same differentiation on the piano.

After Kats-Chernin’s “Sunday Rag”, Blanch returned for Rojas’ “Guitar Concerto”. This is a very interesting work that I suspect would reward the listener from a couple more hearings. 

There is a distinct South American feel with the guitar used as a percussion instrument as much as anything else. That distinguishes it from the piano but at times the same balance issues were noticeable.

The final work was the “Concierto de Aranjuez”, which was a delight. The original orchestral score was cleverly done so the full orchestra only played in the sections the guitar did not and the piano arrangement allows both instruments to feature. 

The slow second movement was especially effective. A short encore from Andrew Blanch of a work by Brazilian guitarist Raphael Rabello rounded out an interesting concert. The inherent difficulties of finding the balance between two essentially percussive stringed instruments eluded the performers at times, but the performance was nevertheless impressive.