{"id":5073,"date":"2016-10-12T12:23:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T19:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=5073"},"modified":"2016-10-14T13:56:27","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T20:56:27","slug":"laura-snowden-deftly-links-the-past-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/laura-snowden-deftly-links-the-past-present-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Snowden Deftly Links the Past, Present, and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
From the Fall 2016 issue of Classical Guitar<\/em><\/a> |BY TH\u00c9R\u00c9SE WASSILY SABA<\/h6>\n

In this 100th anniversary celebration year of the birth of virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916\u20131999)<\/a><\/strong>, it seems fitting to also celebrate the blossoming career of Laura Snowden, the first guitar graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School\u2014a specialist school for young musicians (ages 8\u201318) in London. Since graduating in 2008, Snowden has completed her Masters at the Royal College of Music in London as both a guitarist and a composer, and has quickly established a successful performing career, earning young artist awards such as the Tillett Trust, St. John\u2019s Smith Square, International Guitar Foundation, and most notably, the Julian Bream Trust.<\/p>\n

Bream, the celebrated British guitarist, now in his 80s and no longer performing, continues to commission mainstream composers to write for the classical guitar\u2014an aspect of his outstanding career for which future generations of guitarists are indebted to him. His collaborations with composers such as Benjamin Britten, Lennox Berkeley, and William Walton resulted in profound works for the solo guitar. Snowden has been working not only on the new repertoire that Bream is commissioning, but also on the repertoire that he made famous in his own performing career. This passing on of knowledge is linking this young musician securely with the past and future Bream repertoire.<\/p>\n

It was during her master\u2019s studies at Royal College of Music (attending on a Julian Bream scholarship) that Snowden began traveling to Bream\u2019s house to work with him on repertoire, as he had chosen her to give the next Julian Bream Trust Concert on November 21, 2015, at Wigmore Hall\u2014a tremendous honor at a very high-profile event.<\/p>\n

For this concert (read our\u00a0review of the concert here<\/a><\/strong>) Bream commissioned the British composer Julian Anderson to write a piece for solo guitar\u2014Catalan Peasant with Guitar<\/em>\u2014and Snowden was chosen to play it. Creating the work turned into quite a three-way collaboration.<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/p>\n

Backstage, Laura Snowden is greeted by composer Julian Anderson and Julian Bream (right). Photo by Graham Wade.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJulian Anderson and I met regularly throughout the process, which is how he prefers to work,\u201d Snowden says. \u201cHe might bring a particular series of notes, which he\u2019d ask me to play in different ways or even improvise around. I was really struck by his acute ear for timbre, and his ability to produce truly inventive and authentic ideas while considering the practicalities of the guitar. He even bought himself a guitar. Once, he came up with an intricate counterpoint passage and fingered the whole thing unaided!<\/p>\n

\u201cI also visited Julian Bream as the piece progressed,\u201d she continues, \u201cand upon its completion, Anderson and I paid Bream a visit. Bream made some suggestions relating to the resonance of the guitar\u2014for example, doubling an open string note on a closed string or adding a harmonic here and there. Throughout the process, I would demonstrate a number of fingering options for Anderson, who often had a strong sense of which fingering he preferred, because of the particular color it created. About a month before the premiere, I was asked by Schott [publishers] to send over my fingerings for publication, and these fingerings took into account Anderson\u2019s preferences as well as Bream\u2019s ideas and my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the score, there is an instruction to change the tuning, mid-piece. \u201cAt one point the third string must be tuned down by a quarter tone,\u201d Snowden remarks. \u201cThe writing allows the performer to check it against other open strings and to tweak if necessary. This creates a bell-like and often melancholy resonance, which Anderson called a blue color, intended to evoke the vivid blue background of Miro\u2019s painting \u2018Catalan Peasant with Guitar\u2019 [which partially inspired the piece].\u201d<\/p>\n

There are many time signature changes in in the score as well. \u201cYes,\u201d she says, \u201cthe rhythmic sections have such vitality and drive, often gathering momentum toward a decisive climax. I find hints of Balkan folk influences in some of those passages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the repertoire for this Julian Bream Trust concert were mostly pieces written for Bream, or are pieces strongly associated with him: Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1<\/em> (1957) by Lennox Berkeley; Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op. 70<\/em> (1963) by Benjamin Britten; Segovia, Op. 2<\/em>9 (1925) by Albert Roussel; Fantasia<\/em> (1957) by Roberto Gerhard, Quatre Pi\u00e8ces Br\u00e8ves<\/em> (1933) by Frank Martin; Homenaje: pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy<\/em> (1920) by Manuel de Falla; and Suite Compostelana<\/em> (1962) by Federico Mompou. Snowden explains the program\u2019s selection process: \u201cI had been working on some of those pieces with Bream before the concert was planned. He then suggested some other works, including some that are rarely performed, as well as proposing the idea of performing the Gerhard, Falla, and Roussel as a continuous set. What he loved about every piece in the program was that even though each composer was writing for a relatively unfamiliar and idiosyncratic instrument, each managed to retain his own distinct and unique musical voice and to come up with original, inventive ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong with any advice, Bream will always give a reason why. And suddenly it becomes about everything except the guitar itself. It becomes about feeling, energy, movement, love, freedom. He has a way of relating music to all facets of life, from the details to the whole picture, and showing how everything is connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my own interviews with Bream, I have always found an incredible depth in his comments, which always set you thinking along what seems to be an untrodden path. Snowden agrees: \u201cYes, even just a passing remark from him will often have a certain profundity.\u201d<\/p>\n

ROOTS AT THE MENUHIN SCHOOL<\/h5>\n

When the Yehudi Menuhin School opened in London in 1963, it had just 12 pupils. In the following year, the school moved to the countryside, south of London, to a small village called Stoke D\u2019Abernon, near Cobham, and the number of pupils increased to 24 and has continued to grow. Although Menuhin had long wanted to include the guitar as one of the instruments taught there, it wasn\u2019t until 2004 that the school was able to welcome guitarists to audition, thanks to the financial assistance offered by members of the Rolling Stones, of all people. Initially the school accepted two British guitarists: Snowden and Tom Ellis, and they were taught by Richard Wright.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 16, and funnily enough it was thanks to an advert in Classical Guitar<\/em> magazine that I found out about the Rolling Stones\u2019 donation,\u201d Snowden remembers. \u201cAt my state secondary school I had a lovely teacher called Ashley Hards, who gave me his entire collection of the magazines\u2014I probably read back to about 1994! If I hadn\u2019t seen that advert, I would never have known that music schools existed, let alone that they would offer bursaries [scholarships].\u201d<\/p>\n

Music secondary schools have had some bad press over the years for being competitive \u201chothouses\u201d that produce young virtuosos with many emotional problems, but Snowden doesn\u2019t fit that profile at all. \u201cOn the contrary, for me at least, the environment was creative and relaxing,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was a very precious thing, considering that in my previous school I never felt I could publicly show an interest in my education, and I had become a specialist at hiding and going unnoticed. In my first week at the Menuhin School, I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes: People were voluntarily asking teachers questions during lessons and openly pursuing their own interests, from photography to yoga; I began to feel it was OK to be myself.<\/p>\n

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