Guitar, oboe make up D’Amore duo

William Feasley and Fatma Daglar performed an unusual duet with guitar and oboe this past Tuesday in the Max Noah Recital Hall. With styles ranging from airy Baroque to tango, to an introspective piece written by GCSU music professor Dr. Richard Greene, the duo brought an entirely new sound to the hall.

The D’Amore Duo was formed in 1991 to explore the limited world of chamber music for guitar and oboe. The duo has toured as far away as New Zealand, London and New York.

Feasley was responsible for arranging two of the pieces and compiled others for the program. Greene, who has recently begun writing music especially for the D’Amore Duo, also contributed to the variety of their sound with his composition.

“I came to hear Dr. Greene’s work played,” junior Jamie Cearney said, representing a healthy portion of the audience who came for class-related reasons.

Also present were those who came to hear a different sound.

“I play guitar and I came to hear the guitarist,” Dr. Craig Callender of the English department said. “I’ve never heard this combination before.”

The recital included many opportunities with which the duo could experiment with its combination of sound. Greene’s piece, “… and never the same way twice, flowing …” was inspired by a poem by Wallace Stevens entitled “This Solitude of Cataracts.”

Greene noted that his composition was not meant to be an interpretation, rather, his own expression of the mood created by his reading of the poem. That mood included frenzied strumming as the oboe built to a haunting climax, then a melodic descent to a valley of melancholy sounds, only to be lifted from the ashes by the higher register of the oboe and smooth comforting notes on the guitar.

“The materials and the flow of the piece were inspired by Stevens’ preoccupation with the way our imaginations create an ordered ‘reality’ out of the chaos of impressions we take in through our senses,” Greene said. “So my idea was to write a piece that contained a chaos of ideas, seemingly flowing along in a constantly changing array of figures; but which, when listened to observantly and deeply, would yield an underlying unity that could only be felt if you gave yourself over to the listening of it with total freedom of imagination.”

A similar reason for performing for student audiences, expressed by both performers, was to bring their music to younger people. With the average age of typical audiences being 75, Feasley said that it was “fun to see young people get excited about classical music. (The term) ‘classical’ is so wide.”

“I play Baroque to something written yesterday,” said Daglar, explaining the timeframe of classical music.

In a wide range of moods evoked by the vastly different periods of music, the D’Amore Duo beckoned the audience on an emotional journey through the centuries with its perfect combination of sound.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 18 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry