Jevgeni Finkelstein

Nice online concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pYftVp__QI

To be honest, I'm not the fan of flamenco-type of guitar music, the shapeless over-romantic type of music known as solo classical guitar performance in west. Those odd tenutos and passionate outbursts on fast notes - this is not making any sense for me. This is finger-driven, brainless type of music. Every note in It is so "meaningful", that at the end it looses any meaning.

There must be other way of musicianship. More solid, more strictly shaped, more "simple" or "meaningless" as you like. I have started to from the basis of another approach to classical guitar. Fancy trick's of Segovia, which are still adorable among players, are not convincing for me.

As far as I can not move my fingers in decent way yet (I was away from guitar for awhile and my fingers have lost grip), I'm looking for examples which can describe my ideas from the Internet.

Picture is not too encouraging. But yesterday I found nice exception -  person, who refuses to copy classical guitar's mainstream tradition, who is going in separate way. Russian professor Jevgeni Finkelstein has taken his musical ideas obviously from tradition of fortepiano and viola da gamba. This really sounds like music to my ears, not a exercise for fingers played twice as fast as it would be reasonable.

Listen to the shape of phrases, the inner movement on them - this is something every piano-player knows but rare guitar-players have heared of. Not just the annoying (but oh so convenient) tenuto on accented notes, but the anticipation- tenutos one note before - this is not result of natural movement of fingers. This is from hearing the sounds and making decisions from this very output. Using fingers as humble slaves, not as masters. Fingers are not able to think about music by themselves. Letting them be free, giving them freedom is resulting mediocre crap.

Finkelstein is playing simple pieces and is giving to them life. This is nice. There is no need to struggle with over-complicated stuff, which places technique into first place and produces nervous struggle-atmosphere rather the atmosphere of love, which is the music's main purpose. This is the ultimate test of musical craftmanship - to put life into very simple music, playing it with high tension. Problem is, that in simple music the tension can be only musical. That task - producing musical tension - is much harder than playing  ultrafast progressions. When It's understood, It's simple, but It needs time and dedication.

There can be the main reason of decline - lack of time and dedication. Consumer has no time and he is not willing to dedicate himself into something, He is not able to sacrifice, His idea is consuming (i e "living").

At the end I'ld like to give some suggestions to Finkestein.
1. Though phrases are well-shaped, pauses between them are occasionally too short  Thoughts are given in too fast pace. I feel some need for more time for digesting it Long pauses are giving freshness into sounds, because after long pause, the sound is suprising happening - after short pause this magic vanishes.

2. And secondly - while I enjoyed the accents and the clear singing sound, I felt some lack of character-looking. Technically speaking -  if there is played music half of hour in flowing legato-manner, there appears unhibitited hunger for the sharp staccato-notes.

I recommend this concert to every serious guitar-player. this is something which has some basic things set rightly.


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