Paolo Ugoletti "Fantasia and Passacaglia" for guitar, performed by Esteban Colucci

Sticking with the motif of the passacaglia, here's a fantasia and passacaglia by Paolo Ugoletti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts6kSHl0SV4

German Dzhaparidze: Prelude and Fugue in D minor performed by Esteban colucci

The D minor is up and is worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PzePWatJMY

Reminds me that I've wanted to blog about/through this cycle for some time but IRL stuff has not been amenable to that in the last few years.  But the cycle is easier and easier to hear lately and I really hope that someone, somewhere in publishing decides to get behind this cycle and publish the score.

Esteban Colluci presents "Kaleidoscore" by Atanas Ourkouzounov

Ourkouzounov's homage to Keith Jarrett.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmG0T2i2MCg

It's a fun piece that uses DGDGBE from lowest to highest strings, sometimes known as "pseudo-Russian" tuning. 

a sampling of German Dzhaparidze's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar as performed by Esteban Colucci

I have, of course, talked about blogging about this cycle over the years but IRL events of the last few years have not been so good for me.  That said, I have kept tabs on Colucci's Youtube channel and of course have the 2 disc physical album, which I've enjoyed over the years.  

Now even if I have not managed to blog through German Dzhaparidze's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar in a score analyzing way as I have with Nikita Koshkin's set of preludes and fugues I can at least consolidate performances from most of the cycle in one blog post so you can hear them.  So with that said, links to publicly available online excerpts of the cycle are available after the break.

Stepan Rak "Farewell Finland" / Fantasia Sonata on a Finnish folk song (video w score)

It dawned on me recently I haven't linked to anything by the guitarist composer Stepan Rak in possibly the whole history of this blog.  I have to fix that.  Fortunately Esteban Colucci has posted a wonderful performance of one of Rak's works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jdjlGcPZ4

Don't let the 14 minute continuous playing time dissuade you. Rak is a master of getting large-scale forms to work on solo guitar!  It's worth your time!

German Dzhaparidze Prelude & Fugue No.24 in B moll (Esteban Colucci, guitar) w score

Just because ... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKzyUceu1dM 

The Prelude starts at 0:00. The Fugue starts at 01:47.

There a couple of noteworthy things about this piece that you can read along with in the score as you listen.  The first is how beautifully idiomatic the writing is, particularly in the use of slurs, portamento and glissandi.  This is not music that you can really replicate on a keyboard instrument to the same effect as having it on the guitar with the various hammer-ons, pull-offs, and the slidings up and down the strings.

The second thing that's significant is this is a two-voiced fugue.  George Oldroyd and other scholars of fugue have highlighted again and again that there's no good reason to add extra voices to your fugal texture at the expense of good voice-leading practices.  

Don't believe the theory teachers who tell you that if there are only two voices then it's a two-part invention rather than a fugue.  The difference between a two-part invention and a fugue is generally explained by Kennan and Verrall and other specialists as being defined not by the two-voice texture but by at what pitch the second voice enters.  If the second voice enters at the octave in canonic response to the first voice it's a two-part invention.  If the second voice enters at the fifth then it should be regarded as a fugue.  If the voice enters at any other interval and is strict we could think of it as a canon but for practical purposes an answer at the fifth shows that we're looking at a fugue and that's what happens here.  Dzhaparidze has, of course, helped us a great deal by calling this fugue what it is!  

If you want to hear more of the cycle go get the double CD release at the guitarist's website.

https://www.estebancolucci.com/en/Discography

As with other projects I hope to blog through this beautiful cycle in the future but the Koshkin cycle is both partly recorded and the scores published so that took priority but that hardly means I've forgotten about this beautiful cycle.  

I really, really wish a publisher would get behind this cycle and run with it!  I could probably write an actual book-length project on fugal writing for solo guitar in the early twenty-first century if anyone thought there was the least bit demand for such a book.