Starobin delves deeply into Matiegka’s Op. 31 guitar sonatas | EarRelevant

CD REVIEW:

W.T. Matiegka: Six Sonatas, Op. 31
David Starobin, guitar
Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 31, No. 1
Sonata No. 2 in A minor, Op. 31, No. 2
Sonata No. 3 in G major, Op. 31, No. 3
Sonata No. 4 in E minor, Op. 31, No. 4
Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 31, No. 5
Sonata No. 6 in B minor, Op. 31, No. 6
Bridge 9567
Release Date: April 1, 2022
Duration: 74:32

Jon Ciliberto | 19 SEP 2022

It is a simplification to say that David Starobin’s long career as a classical guitarist has been defined by his extensive exploration of contemporary music for the instrument. Beginning in 1981 and right through to 2019’s Volume 12, his series New Music With Guitar has brought to listeners’ ears exactly that.

Bridge 9567

Starobin hasn’t only recorded new works for guitar. From early in his career, he has been energetic in commissioning new works. He is “the dedicatee of more than 350 new works featuring the guitar, including works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Poul Ruders, and Gunther Schuller.”

Starobin has also served as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, Brooklyn College, Bennington College, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the State University of New York/College at Purchase.

And he founded Bridge Records, soon joined by his wife, Becky, which has released more than 400 CDs and DVDs, and received nominations for 22 Grammy awards (and won three). Bridge was created, according to David, to fill “the need to create a wide-ranging forum for repertoire and performance — a home for the exceptionally interesting and challenging personality- performer and composer alike.” Bridge is a family affair, with son and daughter both involved in the business. (Starobin’s Facebook page indicates that he “Studied Beckyology at Peabody Conservatory.”)

A second major stream of repertoire that Starobin has focused on is 19th-century works. This year Bridge released Starobin’s recording of Six Sonatas, Op 31 by Czech composer Wenzel Thomas Matiegka (Czech: Václav Tomáš Matějka) — described as the guitarist’s final recorded work. Matiegka is a somewhat neglected composer, although he was prominent in the Viennese musical world in his day.

The Sonatas portray both the courtly forms one would expect from a composer whose dedicatees included Count Johann Karl Esterházy, but also reach back to the baroque — Starobin describes the “new-Baroque” and contrapuntal quality of the sixth sonata, in B minor, while one easily hears hints of Beethoven, Hadyn, and Schubert in the works as well.

Starobin retired from the stage in 2018, but in 2020 he joined 35 other guitarists from around the world in the Legnani World Project, a pandemic lockdown run-through of Luigi Legnani’s 36 Caprices op. 20, performing Caprice no. 27. As a classical guitarist put it to me, this brief performance is emblematic of Starobin’s ability, particularly with 19th century guitar music, “to pull apart and put back together, creating a little vignette of each phrase, all its own.”

This gift for interpretation is evident throughout the present recording and illustrates his artistic ability to “serve” the score. The “Menuetto” of Sonata No. 1 both carries the listener along, dancelike, and indulges the ear in a series of subtle expressive variations along the way. This recording encourages close listening as the guitarist’s technique never intrudes, while the interpretive quality described offers myriad opportunities for one’s attention to settle more and more deeply into Matiegka’s compositions. ■