Occasionally one comes across a musician who completely transforms the way one think about an instrument.
Flemish guitarist Raphaella Smits, playing an 8 string John Gilbert guitar was, quite simply, stunning - a revelation - far beyond what you would expect to hear in a smallish room on the 5th floor of a language institute in a provincial Japanese city. The French Institute is in a pleasant, modern, well appointed building in the centre of the city and spreads expensively over three floors, but the sense of shock at finding Smits in such a setting was still a little like walking into a bus shelter and finding the Mona Lisa hung casually on a wall.
In the first half of the recital Smits played a selection of Legnani,
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the sense of shock at finding Smits in such a setting was like walking into a bus shelter and finding the Mona Lisa hung casually on a wall
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Schubert and Mertz on a Mirecourt guitar, a historical French instrument made in 1827.
In the second half she moved to a fabulous 8 string creature, constructed in 1980 by John Gilbert, virtuoso guitar maker, to play a long, modern composition by Wim Henderickx. This was a complex devotional piece based on an Andalusion Saeta. It was difficult and intriguing - a composition on Christ`s passion that involved elements of percussion, elements of flamenco and an awful lot more I haven`t really a clue about but REALLY left me wanting to study it more closely.
Smits - an exceptionally nice person, more than willing to talk - says she believes it will become an important part of the classical guitarist`s repetoire.
She hasn`t recorded it on CD yet - but hopes to before long. It involves much use of profound silence - difficult to achieve in a small room overflowing with 80 people with colds - and will be well worth waiting for.
But it was the Bach Chaconne that lead to the Pauline conversion. Of course, Bach composed for the guitar, so its hardly novel to hear him on the instrument - but Smits has the most astonishingly accomplished technique and the most profound musical sense of any musician, of any genre, I have ever heard live.
Guitarists - particularly heard live without studio technicians to clean up the sound can marr a piece with the whole scrunching,
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Smits has the most astonishingly accomplished technique and the most profound musical sense of any musician, of any genre, I have ever heard live
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grinding mechanical mess of noise created as they plough around between chords. Even the tiniest superfluous sound breaks the spell and reminds one that this is a guitar.
This just does not happen with Smits - she closed her eyes, left us for another world and played with the absolute precision and clarity of a harpsichord, but with a rich, musical lushness. Polyphonic Bach on a non-polyphonic 8 string guitar? Yes! - every complex living element of it - the very soul of the music alive and breathing.
The guitar became "transparent" and one was just left with a fabulous performance of Bach. Quite extraordinary, exciting in a way I had never - in my wicked musical snobbery - thought the classical guitar could be.
The recital was part of a short tour of Japan, starting in Tokyo, organised through the Flanders Centre in Osaka in association with the French Institute and the Jean-Christian Bouvier CM Festival. (see link for party report) The following day Smits gave a Masterclass in Fukuoka before moving on to Osaka.
Smits has a website and an email list, see sidebar for details. If you have the opportunity, she is definitely worth travelling to see.
It goes to show that some of the best and most exciting music in Fukuoka isn`t heard at ACROS but in the foreign culture centres.
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French Institute
