New Roland Dyens CD

I recently got the new Roland Dyens recording, "Naquele Tempo." Recorded on the GSP label, it features his arraignments of songs by the great Brazilian composer Pixinguinha.

Roland Dyens' previous arraignments have ranged from harmonically straightforward yet virtuostic, as in his Felicidade arraignment, to radical re-imaginings of musical material, as in his treatment of Sor etudes. So I didn't really know what to expect with this recording. Furthermore, Pixinguinha composed for an ensemble of musician in a richly contrapuntal style, so I was interested in how Dyens would adapt the complexity of the music to the limited resources of the guitar.

In this recording Dyens sticks to the harmonic language of Pixinguinha, but uses all sorts of virtuosic guitar techniques to try and capture the counterpoint of the original material, and to make the guitar inhabit the sound world of a whole choro ensemble. In a recent interview with Acoustic Guitar he talks about some of these techniques, and how he tried to mimic the choro instruments, particularly the cavaquinho. This can be heard in the title track, where light strumming is magically combined with a fully realized melody and bass line.

I thought some of the arraingments were more successful than other. "Naquele Tempo" "Um x Zero" and "Proezas de Solon" were all stand out tracks. In others, he seems to try to do much at once. In attempting to capture to many simultaneous parts, the music seems to lose some of its natural rythmic ease, and the melodic parts lose their cohesiveness. When it works, though, it is great guitar music, beautifully performed, with Dyens' characteristic swing.