03 May 2024

Crisp probabilistics

This was guitar of a magical beauty.  I did see John Williams once but in a massive hall; being close is something different.  Clear, crisp, deeply felt playing, complex fingered chords, surprising limited obvious right hand finger movements, occasional lightning scalar runs.  These are strings well played, trebly with little obvious sustain, from quick playing or broad movements.  Just sometimes a lingering tone. Just lovely and best up close like this.  He played four pieces, by jazz guitarist Ant Law, five preludes by Villa-Lobos, an original by Pavel and some Bach to finish on.  The original fascinated me.  It was called Wave 1 and was his first work performance at a recital.  The inspiration was the famed double-slit experiment that passes waves and particles and forms various interference patterns displaying ambiguity and probablistics (see Wikipaedia ...).  I was fascinated that you could hear the interference patterns in poly...s and changing times.   Pavel played this without introductions or applause between tunes, citing music listened as on a CD, without written music and with a malleable sense of time and a lovely sharpness that cuts to the bone.  Just revelatory.

Pavel Ralev (guitar) performed for the CIMF at Verity Lane.

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