Fortunately, today allowed me time to follow up on my preview of guitarist Eric Wang’s OMNI on-Location video only a few hours after its release on YouTube this morning at 10 a.m. I was not familiar with either of the selections; but, after about eighteen minutes of listening, I was glad to have encountered both of them. I was also left wondering if Wang had decided to select two pieces with titles that had reflected on the piano music of Frédéric Chopin!
Eric Wang playing the opening passage of Giulio Regondi’s “Nocturne ‘Rêverie’” (screen shot from the YouTube video of Wang’s recital)
The opening selection was “Nocturne ‘Rêverie,’” composed by Giulio Regondi. The composer was about ten years younger than Chopin; and he seems to have been inspired to pursue the nocturne genre after becoming aware of the nocturnes of John Field (whom Chopin met in 1832). I shall leave it to the musicologists to decide whether Regondi’s Opus 19, given the title “Nocturne ‘Rêverie,’” reflects the style of the earlier or later of those two composers (if either of them at all). (Personally, I think that any signs of influence would probably be accidental!)
On the other hand, I suspect it would be hard to believe that, when contemporary composer Ronaldo Miranda wrote his “Appassionata,” a little under eight minutes in duration, he did not have Ludwig van Beethoven in his mind, even if in the background rather than the foreground. It would be fair to say that, like Beethoven’s Opus 57, Miranda’s guitar solo could be appreciated as a study in mood swings. Those swings may have been a bit more subtle than Beethoven’s; but, to be fair, the guitar has a more limited dynamic range than the piano!
Taken as a whole, this “mini” concert could be appreciated as a study in contrasting dispositions; and those contrasts were clearly in play over the course of Wang’s performance of these two selections.
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