Mela Guitar Quartet: Overtures & Dances
TRPTK

As distinguished as the musicians are that compose the Mela Guitar Quartet—Matthew Robinson, George Tarlton, Michael Butten, and Zahrah Hutton—and as exemplary as their performances are, it's smart programming choices that recommend Overtures & Dances most. On this hour-plus collection of material from opera, ballet, and dance works, the quartet nods to French composers Debussy, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns whilst also featuring pieces by Glinka, Rachmaninoff, Holst, Elgar, Humperdinck; adding to the release's appeal is a suite of music by Joe Hisaishi from My Neighbour Totoro. Simply put, any album that includes it along with equally endearing excerpts from Ma mère l'Oye can't help but charm.

The group formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music and has since performed around the world and issued, including Overtures & Dances, four albums. In 2023, Butten and Hutton joined founding members Robinson and Tarlton, the two taking the places of Jiva Housden and Daniel Bovey. While the latter's no longer a formal member, he's credited with arrangements for two of the album pieces, with the remainder credited to Robinson and Tarlton, and in the case of Sergei Rachmaninoff's “Polka italienne,” Vyacheslav Gryaznov and Tarlton.

What makes the release particularly satisfying is the seamlessness with which its pieces undergo the transition from orchestral and solo piano arrangements to ones for guitars. And with four in play, the group is able to approximate the expansive soundworld of an orchestral work as well as elaborate on the one associated with piano. Opening the set with Mikhail Glinka's “Overture” from his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila was a smart move in being such a dazzling showcase for the group's virtuosity and, in the arrangement's incorporation of hocketing, the guitar. Hearing the players pass runs seamlessly from one to another throughout this radiant statement makes for an engaging start. Its beguiling quality carries over into Debussy's Deux Arabesques, with the guitar in the dreamy “Andantino con moto” evoking the timbral splendour of the harp and the material entrancing with gracefully flowing contours; the "Allegretto scherzando,” by comparison, is playful, even impish. Reprised from the group's earlier Pluck, Strum, and Hammer album and taken from the third act of Saint-Saëns' opera Samson and Delilah, “Bacchanale” is no less rousing in this new context and offers the quartet's new members the opportunity to impose their own perspective on the insistent dance material.

Five excerpts from Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye form a riveting centrepiece. Originally written in 1910 as a piano duet and later orchestrated by Ravel into a ballet, the material retains its melodic lustre when re-imagined for guitar quartet. The spell is quickly cast with Sleeping Beauty's gentle “Pavane” and “Petit Poucet,” which subtly evokes the image of Tom Thumb wandering through the forest and anxious to find his way back home. The harp filigrees that are so familiar a part of the original arrangement of “Laideronnette” remain solidly in place in the guitar version when the quartet matches the sound design so vividly. The “Beauty and the Beast” saga is invoked in the waltz-styled fourth part when the delicate Beauty-associated melody intertwines with the Beast's low theme (watch for the lovely glissando that signifies his transformation into a prince). While not based on any particular fairytale, “Le jardin féerique” is no less evocative than the other parts when the stirring beauty of its joyful, sarabande-driven climax is so captivatingly delivered by the guitarists.

Elsewhere, we get from Rachmaninoff a delightful dance that, in its original piano duet form, was played by the composer and his wife Natalia as an encore and at parties, and from Holst the vivacious “A Fugal Overture,” both pieces splendid showpieces for the guitar quartet format. Returning to the fairytale theme of the Ravel work, Humperdinck's represented by the overture from his Brothers Grimm-inspired opera Hänsel und Gretel. While there are lively moments, the piece often fixates on a tender rendering of “Abends will ich schlafen geh'n” (Evening Prayer), the idea being that the two children sing it so angels will watch over them as they sleep. Concluding an album with Joe Hisaishi can never be a bad idea, and illustrative of it is Bovey's arrangement of musical themes from the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbour Totoro. Carefree joy, bluesy swagger, nostalgic yearning, and even '50-styled rock'n'roll all come into play as the six-minute suite advances.

Playing instruments crafted by British luthier Michael Gee, the award-winning quartet exploits the timbral potential of the guitar to create new versions that don't necessarily replicate the familiar arrangements of the works through transcription but instead recast the material anew. The dense, intricate tapestries presented throughout the release by Mela Guitar Quartet beguile from start to finish, and the stellar playing by the group is never less than exacting.

February 2025