EGTA-Journal 11-2017

Gerd-Michael Dausend
three, which were tricky to say the least.
[…] I went to see Max and said some of
these passages are just not going to
work out. He suggested some minor adaptions
which weren’t really much help
to be honest; at least, I didn’t think they
sounded as convincing musically as the
original almost unplayable phrases. So
I spent a solid two weeks doing nothing
else but learning that piece. I took the
difficult passages and turned them into
exercises for myself, because there were so
much unusual figurations. […]And then I
began to see the musical colour he had in
mind: the rhythmic inflections, the pathos,
the melancholy, the humour, the drama
[…] And the original key to this initial understanding
on my part, was finding the
right fingering.” 28
In wenigen Fällen kam der Anstoß
für neue Werke auch von außen.
So wurde z. B. das Concerto Elegiaco
von Leo Brouwer auf
Anregung des britischen
Komponisten und
BBC-Produzenten
Gareth Walters
geschrieben.
Die BBC bezahlte den Komponisten,
das Werk erlebte unter Brouwers Dirigat
am 21.9. 1986 seine Uraufführung, die
CD-Einspielung entstand im folgenden
Jahr und dem RCA Victor Chamber Orchestra.
Dieses Stück war das erste von
Brouwer, das Bream überhaupt in sein
Repertoire aufnahm. Im Anschluss an
diese erfreuliche Zusammenarbeit bestellte
Bream eine große dreisätzige Sonate
beim Kubaner, die er auch einspielte
und herausgab.
Bream wurde zur Entstehung dieser Sonate
gefragt: „When you commissioned it
from Brouwer, did you give him any specifications
in the style of those you gave to
Henze?
No, I didn’t. The reason I thought he would
write a good sonata is that he’d written me
a concerto and the first movement was in
sonata form and I thought he had handled
the discipline very adroitly. I thought at the
time that a solo sonata, with the skills that
he had shown working in sonata form,
would augur well for his new guitar piece.
Did you have to change the fingering?
No, everything was beautifully fingered;
I did in fact amend a couple of fingerings
and I did change one chord, I seem to remember,
but apart from that nothing
else.” 29
Daneben kamen auch immer wieder
unbestellte Werke bei Bream im Broad
Oak House in Semley (Wiltshire) an:
„Every time I come back from a tour, there
are at least four or five new works that people
have sent me. It seems as if anything
goes; I’ll get one serial piece, two loads of
romantic rubbish, an academic number
written by someone who goes to composition
classes on Thursday evenings, and just
the one piece that may be half-way decent,
although that could be ineptly written for
the instrument.” 30
Eine gute und wirkungsvolle Positionierung
neuer Werke in seinen Konzertprogrammen
war Bream stets wichtig:
„The important thing is not to push contemporary
music down people’s throats, or
to try and deceive them by sweetening the
pill. One has to programme contemporary
pieces in such a way that they are a refres-
(Abb.: Sammlung G.-M. Dausend)
28 ebda. S. 85 29 classicalguitar…, a. a. O.
30 Palmer, a. a. O., S. 88
30 EGTA-Journal