Concert Review: Jerome Ducharme at Leacock Theatre, Mount Royal University

By Guest on September 4, 2011 in Canadian Concert Reviews, Guest Posts

This post is by Calgary contributor Murray Visscher
from a series of posts pertaining to Guitarfestwest 2011

Jerome Ducharme
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Leacock Theatre, Mount Royal University

Having been invited to teach and perform at five consecutive festivals in 2011, Jerome Ducharme is having the busiest summer of his career. At his Wednesday evening performance at Calgary’s Classical Guitarfestwest, Mr. Ducharme clearly demonstrated the reason for his high demand. The man can make a classical guitar jump and sing!

Jerome Ducharme warmly greeting the audience - Photo via Mount Royal Facebook Page (click to visit)

Mr. Ducharme has appeared in Calgary on two previous occasions, opening each recital with a “Pavan by Luis Milan”. In 2006 the opener was “Pavan #1”, and in 2010 it was “Pavan #2” and he continued this theme by opening Wednesday’s recital with Milan’s “Pavan #3”. In this short, delicate piece Jerome confidently demonstrated his ability to create tension and resolution using time, timbre and dynamics, all wrapped up in a fluid four voice texture. The tone for the evening was set.

The second piece was one of two sets of variations on ‘Folia de Espana’ to be performed during the evening. In this set, the famous Op. 45 by Mauro Giuliani, Mr. Ducharme’s warm personality combined with his passion for the guitar to breathe new life into this well known piece. The technical challenges in the score gave way to a highly emotional interpretation, while Jerome’s playful execution and intuitive use of tempo resulted in some exquisite moments, particularly in his phrase endings.

The first half continued with Jaques Hetu’s “Intermezzo, Op. 80” and ended with Maxime McKinley’s “Mandala”. Although Mandala premiered just over a year ago (August 2010) Calgary has already been treated to two performances, and I think the piece is a great example of an offering that improves with age. Mandala exhibits a strong connection between composer and performer, moving through sharply contrasting sections, each one a technical jungle through which Mr. Ducharme smoothly negotiates seamless transitions before bringing the entire event to its warm, calm resolution.

The second half opened with another piece by McKinley, “…être cela même”, which requires the guitar to be tuned in quarter-tones allowing Mr Ducharme the opportunity to fearlessly take his audience on a teeth-grinding harmonic and melodic adventure. The evening closed with the second set of Folia variations, “Variation on ‘la Folia de Espana’ and Fugue”, this one also famous, as it was written by Manuel M. Ponce at the request of Andre Segovia. Although the technical demands of this piece are formidable, Mr Ducharme seemed to navigate the 20 variations effortlessly before embarking on the fugue, which he played as a testament to how lyrical the guitar can sound in the hands of a performer who understands the necessity of connecting polyphonic phrases and can do so without creating any of those little noises that normally remind an audience that the instrument they are listening to is a guitar.

Mr. Ducharme was persuaded to return for two short encores before the enthusiastic audience finally let him rest for the evening, but I’m sure they would have all stuck around for more.

-Murray Visscher (see more posts by Murray)

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