Review of Venus' Song New Music for Guitar Vol 1 by Gisbert Watty, ArsPublica 2011

The subtitle of this cd almost makes me dream: New Music for Guitar Vol 1! First cd therefore of a series of recordings devoted to the new music for contemporary guitar, enough to make me smile for more than one month.
I know Gisbert Watty well, we had interviewed him a couple of years ago it for the Italian Blog Chitarra e Dintorni Nuove Musiche and he had supriesed me for his devotion and his enthusiasm about looking for new roads and new possibilities for his guitar, particularly for a neglected historicall aspect about the classical repertoire: compositions for ensemble in which the guitar appears.
This first entitled volume Venus' Song, from the homonym passage composed by Fabrizio De Rossi Re is composed in fact from passages where the guitar doesn't play alone, but always or together with the flute of Tristaino, the piano played by Sigmund Watty or the clarinet of Marcello Bonacchelli, or it plays accompanied by the electronics as in the sad passage of Andrea Nicoli or in electric version accompanied by the cd as foresees the music by Thomas Reiner, Australian composer that had already in past composed for Gisbert Watty and for the trio altrove 1.3.
Only one the score for soloist guitar Three Dances in the Abstract composed by René Mense.
Six are the composers for this cd. Besides the quoted Reiners, De Rossi Re and Renè Mense also lend their talent Andrea Nicoli and Thomas Bottger. The music here ring belongs more to the music for herself, abstract music, meditative, proper to accompany the silence, to define and to widen the space.
Only exception the passage "fan-fair" by Thomas Reiner where a to pulsating minimal techno worthy of the more experimental Jeff Mills creates a base for the structures produced by the electric guitar of Watty, correct conclusion of an interesting cd indeed. Now we have to wait the next volumes.
I allow me to signal Venus' Song to all the guitarists that desire to go out of the formula of the solo recital and I make my compliments to the Italian independent record label ArsPublica for this beautiful initiative, not the only to mention in their interesting catalog.