Twee Stukken voor gitaar (M. Flothuis) // Fantasy on “Blanche comme la Neige” (V. Archer)

An excerpt from my Final master's recital - May 26, 2021 - Ledger Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

M. Flothuis (1914-2001)
Twee stukken voor Gitaar op. 20 (1944)
I. Folia (0:30)
II. Habanera (5:35)

V. Archer (1913-2000)
Fantasy on “Blanche comme la neige” (1978)
(8:50)

Tim Beattie, guitar
Guitar by Mark Usherovich https://www.usherovichguitar.com
A/V - Bob Whitney



Notes

Marius Flothuis - Twee stukken voor gitaar (1944)

Despite reaching renown as a great composer and musicologist, Marius Flothuis’ works for guitar are rarely (if ever) heard. Flothuis served as assistant artistic director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1937 until 1974, with a short break between 1942-1953. As an active member of the Resistance, he had several Jewish refugees permanently hiding in his home before being betrayed and outed to authorities. He was arrested in September 1943 and taken to a prison in Amsterdam where he spent several months before being deported to Camp Vught. Nearing the end of the war, he was subjected to many unimaginable horrors, but due to extraordinary resilience was able to return home to Amsterdam at long last in May of 1945.
In spite of degrading conditions while in captivity, he was still able to compose, and among those compositions written during this period are his two pieces for solo guitar. The pieces demonstrate a characteristically tasteful balance of familiar forms and phrase structures, thoroughgoing melody, and deep expressive possibilities. Crafted carefully within an oblique harmonic language -- occasionally teetering on the edges of tonality -- the pieces are almost on the edges of themselves; as twisted, forlorn remembrances of a Folia and Habanera one might have heard in fonder times gone by, rendered here in a bleaker ‘now’. The pieces are modest, but generous — and the music speaks for itself.


Violet Archer - Fantasy on “Blanche Comme la Neige” (1978)

Violet Archer honed her craft as a student of Bartok and Hindemith, and -- in addition to her work as a composer -- built a career as a percussionist and teacher, eventually chairing the University of Alberta’s theory department. Written in 1978 as a commission for the Canadian Music Competition, Archer’s Fantasy is one of two works she’s written for the instrument: the other being a concerto -- Four Dialogues. Despite her importance among Canadian composers of the past century, Archer’s guitar works have been given little attention since their respective premieres.
The Fantasy takes both its narrative and thematic basis from a particular French-Canadian version of the Blanche comme la neige folklore (this version sourced from Kenneth Peacock’s Songs of the Newfoundland Outports). Blanche-neige (“White as Snow”) is a beloved folk tale that ostensibly originated in 19th-century Germany, and has been retold in many different narrative forms and versions (the most famous of which is Disney’s Snow White).

The Fantasy captures the narrative well in both its structure and expressive nature. It is formed in a sort of ‘rounded’ ternary -- with a soft, melodic opening; a forceful B section full of rhythmic vitality and barrelling intensity; a developing C section that begins in a dark, angular waltz and breaks down into a brooding largo; and finally a brief coda leading us towards its end.