On track: Value for money and lots of fun

By WILLIAM DART

Owen Moriarty's collection of solo and ensemble guitar music has an eye-catching cover and, with two discs for the price of a single CD, you're certainly getting notes for dollars.

For this young Wellingtonian, newly graduated with a Masters from Massey, it is a laudable initiative.

As background music, the guitar is pleasant enough, but when one gets up front and attentive, problems arise.

A smattering of Baroque items was a mistake. The romanticising of a Weiss Passacaglia is not going to win Moriarty any friends in the Authenticist camp and there are more serious issues with Bach, with irritating extraneous sound in the background of the Fugue.

In the familiar Spanish repertoire, Moriarty gives us more colour but sometimes lacks the rhythmic flexibility needed, evident in Tarrega's transcription of the Albeniz Serenata Espagnola.

With the three other members of the Toru Guitar Quartet behind him, Piazzolla's Tanguango sounds laboured.

The three solo items by the Argentinian composer are more attractive, although the raw discords of Primavera Portena need leavening by some other instrumental timbres.

New Zealanders Mike Hogan and Peter Leask write fluently for the instrument and it's in these performances that Moriarty takes flight.

There is a lulling beauty to Hogan's In the Caves, with the four Toru guitarists weaving their lines around the undulating harmonies.

Yu Gao's Aria is a curiosity. The young Auckland clarinettist has joined forces with Rosemary Barnes in a set of fantasias on Italian opera melodies. We're talking of forgotten names like Henry Lazarus and Charles Le Thiere who fashioned kitschy potpourris from Verdi, Bellini and Donizetti, as well as two original works by Ponchielli and Rossini.

Ponchielli, of Dance of the Hours fame, provides In Convengo which has Gao duetting with himself in what may be the nearest an Italian composer came to writing a polka - and it is unmitigated fun.

Gao and Barnes wrap some pretty phrases around the quartet from Rigoletto and take Donizetti's Lucy around the castle and back in a scrumptious 4min 57sec.

Immense fun this, with sympathetic production from Atoll's Wayne Laird. With shrewd marketing this could reach or even create a cult audience all of its own.

* Owen Moriarty, Solo & Ensemble Guitar (Ode, MANU 5003/04); Yu Gao, Aria (ACD 123, through Atoll)