Turkish March

"Our arranger tells us that he bases his arrangement on both the orchestral score and Rubinstein's piano arrangement. I'm the world's worst at getting sidetracked, which is how I've just been watching a YouTube video of this piece played on eight grand pianos. Now so much 'Wow!' as 'Why?' And 'Why?' is exactly the question I always ask when a famous piece is re-arranged for guitar, What does the guitar version bring to an audience already familiar with the piece? In this case, what it doesn't bring is the ability of the guitar to do vibrato - there are few long notes and some of those are double-stopped. And it can't match the range of pitch or dynamic range of the original either. However, your oft-jaundiced reviewer did actually like this. The fruity sound of the guitar, compared to the sometimes-soulless piano, gives the piece more sense of life and a real lift. Much of the writing is in parallel octaves, giving a feeling of brilliance without muddying the sound with 'too much stuff'. The ornamentation is fun, though the double appoggiature mean that the left hand is darting about facilitating their production. Technically the arrangement is not hard - perhaps Grade 6 - but there is a lot of playing up on the body, so the team will need good guitars and good technique in order to play in time and in tune. Although broadly set in SATB style, there is a small amount of cross-fertilisation, so that even the notional bass player will be up the neck in XII position playing grace notes. So this isn't really for a mixed ability ensemble. Set in the key of D, just Guitar 4 is tuned down. I found it odd that Guitar 4 plays the final chord on his own - I'd give everyone that final D, if only to stop the other three standing up and bowing before the job is one. The part scores fit neatly onto one side of A3, so there are no page turns, and the typesetting is clear and there are plenty of dynamics. There is no fingering, but it's not really needed. I think this could be a surprisingly effective crowd-pleaser, especially at those concerts where the name of the encore is never announced - it will leave a lot of the audience guessing where they've heard it before, and they'll probably be whistling it on the journey home."

Derek Hasted (Classical Guitar Magazine)