I was in Slava & Leonard Grigoryan concert in Tartu at 2nd of august of 2005 and Saffire quitar-quartet concert in Pärnu one day later. Slava & Leonard are members of Saffire. There are also Karin Schaupp and Gareth Koch. Pretty german names. Name "Grigoryan" name is actually from Kasakhztan.
Let's start form beginning: Tartu, 2nd August. Big hall of "Vanemuise Kontserdimaja". Slava starts to play Suite Castellana by Federico Moreno-Torroba. It's passionate. Slava rises often his right leg and puts it back to the floor with powerful clap. I'ld advise him to use the cover to damp the disturbing noises of shoe clapping. Neverthless, his sound is active and surprisungly fills all of the big hall. I was afraid, that this hall is too big for guitar. But I was wrong.
Then Slava takes baritone-guitar and plays the 1st cello-suite of JS Bach in C as written originally. He reads the music from sheet. This Bach was laud and passionate. But there was no musical control, no character, no breathing. Lack of intellectuality. Bach w/o intellectual clearance just doesn't work. Passion is nice thing to have, but It dies without intellectual help to it. And this observation counts to the whole australian guitar-playing I heared in those 2 days. It's passionate, but "undigested" intellectually. Technically It is OK. I mean, that there are no techincal problems for Slava and Saffire, but this is just the beginning of the musical development.
This is the sin of schools today. When one learns in enforced style just technique and only it, he finds himself in empty space, when he is obtained this very technique. One can play, but to play HOW. He has no answer to it. Because He has studied all those boring hours between 4 walls only technique and you can actually see those 4 walls of emptyness when you are listening to him in live.
This is very critical story from my side. Saffire and Grigoryan's aren't bad players, but for me they produced more headache then pleasure. As pity as it can be.
Victim of orchestra
When Slava played in solo I wondered, why He is so mechanic in pauses. It was evitable, that He added some precise amount of time to pause when it was needed. he was'nt able to "let the silence ring" freely till It's logical end. In solo music I consider this ability as one of the main skills. But this kind of free floating in rhytm is almost impossible in duo or quartet. There must be some kind of agreements made beforehand how long the pauses ought to be. The decision was given to Slava, who gave a signal with His head, when It was needed. Slava's pausings were too passionate. There was just too little pauses left between separate phrases and for me It's same whether you make pauses too short or whether you are taking off the meaning of music. Pauses are filling music with thought. It's like air for living organism. Slava gave too few air and the music wasn't live.
