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Six New Compositions by David Leisner

Six compositions of guitar chamber music by David Leisner have recently been released by two publishers. Merion Music/Theodore Presser Co. has just made available the 23-minute guitar quartet, The Cat that Walked by Himself. Based on one of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and written on commission for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the piece is in 11 short, entertaining movements, which use quotes from the Kipling children's story as inspiration.

William Kanengiser, first guitarist of the LAGQ, wrote about the piece in Chamber Music magazine: "The work covers a startling range of styles and techniques. For instance, the opening movement, 'When the Tame Animals were Wild', portrays the chaos of primordial wildness by having themes in clashing tempi, with keys superimposed upon each other. The third movement, 'The First Singing Magic' captures the wonder of that image with a most lyric and tonal melody, with the score marking 'with infinite tenderness'. Various effects which exploit the medium of four guitars abound, including double-stop glissandi to imitate the irritated mewing of 'the cat', and shimmering brush-stroke arpeggios to portray "a still magic". The piece includes a passacaglia ('The Cat's Lullaby'), a fughetta, and a quodlibet wherein the dog, horse and cow themes are introduced separately and then united harmoniously as the 'first friends'". The Washington Post described the piece as "music that waxed whimsical and colorful," and the Springfield Union-News wrote, "Leisner's musical characterizations were delightfully conceived...The piece's construction was motivically tight and contrapuntally inventive." The Cat that Walked by Himself is available only as a special-order, custom-print edition from www.presser.com.

Earlier this year, Doberman Editions released 5 Leisner works for guitar with other instruments. Roaming is another guitar ensemble piece, this time for three guitars. Commissioned by and recorded by the New World Guitar Trio, this is an 8-minute piece in 3 sections that plays with fragments of the American folk song, "Red River Valley", and turns them into original material. It has a Southwestern flavor and includes a rhythmically askew, "drunken" passage toward the end. Two works for voice and guitar are Heaven's River and Four Yiddish Songs. The latter are arrangements for medium (or high) voice and guitar of four of the most popular Yiddish folk songs, famous for their liveliness and melodic beauty. Rather than straightforward arrangements, they are Leisner-ized, in the similar tradition of composers of the past like Copland, de Falla, and Stravinsky. Heaven's River, for soprano and guitar, is a mystical and lyrical setting of 3 profoundly spiritual poems by the great Hindu writer Rabindranath Tagore. This short song cycle is deeply gratifying to rehearse and to perform. Two classic chamber works from the mid-80's, complete Doberman's recent Leisner releases - Extremes for flute, clarinet and guitar, and Trittico for flute, cello and guitar. Extremes is in 2 generously proportioned movements, one marked "introverted" and the other "extroverted". The first is a Bartok-inspired chromatic movement, brooding and ethereal, while the second jumps to a more diatonic tonality in a raucous mood with a flavor of rock and jazz. In Trittico, two shorter movements, one a joyful Minimalist romp and the other a rondo with a broad lyrical theme, surround a longer rhapsodic meditation with solos for both the cello and the guitar. These works may be ordered from the usual sources or directly from www.dobermaneditions.com (click on Catalog, then Searching by Composers, then Leisner).

More information on all of the above and more at www.davidleisner.com.

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