Watersmeet: The Music of Stephen Dodgson

This disc is now available on the Cadenza label, (CACD0603). You can obtain it from the Cadenza website.

Tracks (all works are recorded here for the first time)

Watersmeet for Solo Guitar and Guitar Ensemble [1]

Jonathan Leathwood, solo guitar · Tetra Quartet · Aquarelle Quartet · Appassionata Trio · Carl Herring · Richard Wright, conductor

London Lyrics for Voice and Guitar
London is a Milder Curse (Pierre Motteux) [2]
Shadwell Stair (Wilfred Owen) [3]
From a Ship, Tossing (Arthur Clough) [4]
Margaret, Maude and Mary Blake (George Rosstrevor-Hamilton) [5]
River Music (Cecil Day-Lewis) [6]

Neil Jenkins, tenor · Jonathan Leathwood, guitar

Partita No. 4 for Guitar
Slow: moody and capricious [7]
Agitated: with a tense rhythm [8]
Stately and expressive [9]
Energetic but measured [10]

Jonathan Leathwood, guitar

Duo for Cello & Guitar
Arabesque [11]
Invention [12]
Nocturne [13]
March [14]
Vigil [15]
Bagatelle [16]

Rohan de Saram, cello · Jonathan Leathwood, guitar

Personent Hodie: Fantasy on an Ancient Carol for Massed Guitars [17]

Tetra Quartet · Aquarelle Quartet · Appassionata Trio · Carl Herring · Richard Wright, conductor

Introduction by Jonathan Leathwood (full notes on the music by Stephen Dodgson are included in the CD booklet)

Stephen Dodgson’s output for guitar spans half a century and exceeds forty works. Pieces such as Fantasy-Divisions and the First Partita are established classics and his contribution to the study repertoire is as great – and as knowledgeable – as that of any player, though he does not play himself. And yet guitarists who think of him as ‘their’ composer might be unaware of similar contributions to the harpsichord and the piano, to give just two examples (he has mastered every medium and size of forces). As he focuses on a given instrument he tends to focus, in parallel, on a particular genre: five books of inventions for the harpsichord, seven sonatas for piano, four partitas for guitar.

Dodgson’s contribution to the guitar’s chamber repertory, above all in combination with other instruments, is the most significant of any modern composer. By responding to each new commission squarely, solving problems of timbre and texture in the context of large-scale pieces, he has repeatedly broken ground in what have since become standard combinations. Works such as the cello and guitar duo, Personent Hodie for massed guitars (both in this collection), Capriccio for flute and guitar and Follow the Star for guitar trio are, in my opinion, unsurpassed in their medium.

In the course of making this album, in which each piece is being recorded for the first time, we were privileged to have the composer listening to every take as it was made. And it is as a supremely attentive listener rather than as a director that his presence is felt everywhere. His prime concern was that we, the performers, could identify with the music at all times – as we shaped the music, it mattered even more to him that we were convinced than that he was. He is generous with his own suggestions, sparing in his admonitions and happiest when the performers are excited by their own developing ideas. And identify one must: for although his music is celebrated for its clarity – its pellucid textures, driving rhythms and coolly poised melodies – he can be elusive, too. He is a devotee of the subtle character piece, and while composers have traditionally placed such pieces as interludes within larger forms, he is fond of making them bear the weight of openings or finales. One thinks of the first movement of the Fourth Partita, stark and brooding, with flashes of wildness; the finale to the cello and guitar duo, playful but grating and nervous; or the last movement of the Fourth Partita, the slyest music in the guitar repertoire.

I am very grateful to producer and engineer John Taylor and to the amazing David Shepherd of Cadenza Music, without whose commitment and inspiration this recording could not have been made.

Jonathan Leathwood, January 21, 2006