La valle de la luna

This is a substantial piece in two movements, and another one in Patrick Roux's on-going series of Scenes Panoramiques using actual geographical locations as his inspiration. The opening movement Contemplation is set with a dropped 6th string D in the somewhat unusual key of G minor, Its low tessitura at the opening makes it sound very lugubrious and rather mysterious too. As with much of Roux's music that I have seen, there is nothing obvious, no hackneyed sequences but rather music that unfolds on its own terms. This often has the side effect of making it very hard to get to grips with, both technically or musically but nevertheless this strangely unnerving first movement is worth the effort, After a relatively low key beginning things take a more dramatic turn, as the piece has a very slow build, wherein the style gets more chromatic and the writing climbs higher and higher until a dramatic fortissimo passage in three voices with a chromatic semiquaver running element as its middle voice, at which point one is playing higher than the 12th fret in three complex parts. Then to close, the passion goes out of the piece and the music seems to make a U-turn, only to reach an fff section of block chordal writing right at the end. which then, and only then, sinks into an uneasy calm at the close. The second movement Desert D'Atacama is in that mixture of 6/8 and 3 /4 and now has an additional 5th string to G. It spends some considerable time as a folk-like guitar idea bouncing off the open G. Of course things don't stay there for very long and the writing gradually becomes more dissonant whilst keeping up the continuous running quavers. A new 12/8 idea then emerges with heavily accented chords at the opening of nearly every bar, a situation that carries on for quite a length until reaching a climactic chordal section around bar 151 onwards. Things carry on for quite a time on from that but as the length of this last movement is over 330 bars and it consists almost entirely of constant quavers. one can see that it requires a great deal of stamina. So, all considered this is yet another substantial offering from a writer who rarely, if ever, repeats himself but rather manages to surprise at almost every turn. In doing this he does often take chances, and I confess to sometimes find his pieces somewhat odd but he certainly cannot be blamed for sitting on his laurels and repeating himself. If nothing else he is forever taking you to places you haven't been before: whether you like it when you get there however is another thing entirely. Chris Dumigan

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