Major Hall

Artist
MARK LEIGHTON (guitar, Great Britain)

Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach - Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major, BWV 998
Giulio Regondi - Nocturne "Rêverie" ("Dreams")

Mark Leighton - "White Nights Suite": "White Nights" and "Luftschloss" (Castle of the Air)
Toru Takemitsu - "Equinox" (Equinox)
Francisco Tarrega - "Capricho Arabe" (Arabic Caprice)
Francisco Tarrega - "Recuerdos" ("Memories")
Alexandre Tansman - "Piece en forme Passacaglia" ("Piece in the form of a passacaglia")

Young classical guitar virtuoso Mark Leighton graduated with distinction from the Royal Northern College of Music eight years ago, where he was taught by internationally acclaimed guitarist Craig Ogden. In his second year of study, Leighton founded the Quartic Guitar Quartet, which focuses on innovative arrangements of well-known or rarely heard pieces of music.

The young guitarist was recently awarded first prize in the Gordon Crosskey Guitar Competition and the year before won the Grand Prix at the Premio Scarlatti competition in Vilnius.

He introduces his programme as follows: "My White Nights Suite is written as a reaction to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story 'White Nights'. It is set in the summer nights, with the protagonist, Dreamer, feeling lonely but unexpectedly falling in love with the young Anastasia. However, this love is unrequited as she waits for her lover to return. The suite White Nights tells the story from the reader's perspective and has two musical themes: one for the Dreamer and one for Anastasia. "The Castle of the Air is a shorter piece that attempts to convey the Dreamer's worldview: an over-romanticised interaction with the environment and the personification of the many inanimate objects we encounter every day. Toru Takemitsu's Equinox is perhaps the most abstract work in this programme. Its overall harmony and compositional approach are somewhat removed from the Western classical tradition. It is more difficult to listen to it without knowing that there are some musical concepts that may at first seem unacceptable. So my advice to the listener: try to allow yourself to passively experience the notes and colours. If you switch on your imagination, you may suddenly realise what kind of world you are in. When I play, I myself see a picturesque Japanese garden: a large pond, stones, a bridge, lots of flowers and trees. I walk around the garden while the piece is playing and watch how the light changes the perspective of each object."