Faculty Artist Series: Daniel Bolshoy

The Hugh Hodgson School of Music will kick off the Spring 2021 semester with a Faculty Artist Series concert by guitar faculty Dr. Daniel Bolshoy. The program consists of all original music for guitar and has been pre-recorded by Dr. Bolshoy in a video which will premiere on the HHSOM YouTube channel on Wednesday, January 13th at 7 p.m.

The centerpiece is the Sonata Romantica by Manuel Maria Ponce, who wrote it in the style of Schubert. The great Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia would regularly commission Ponce to compose new piece in the style of old composers, and he would often perform the music attributing the pieces to the "wrong" composer. He's done such projects under the names Alessandro Scarlatti, Silvius Leopold Weiss, Fernando Sor, Nicolo Paganini and in this case Franz Schubert. The subtitle of the piece is "hommage to Schubert, who loved the guitar." Schubert used to sketch many of his compositions in bed, using a guitar to try out some harmonies, before getting up to "properly" write-out the music on the piano. The piece is in four movements, the third movement is a "moment musical" a title borrowed from Schubert. The second movement is very much like a song, and the first movement is in typical Schubert Sonata form, like a piano sonata.

Also on the program, Un Sueno en la Floresta by Agustin Barrios, is one of Bolshoy's favorite guitar composers and is possibly his most challenging work, and it is associated with a poem he wrote describing how he came to play the guitar. 

The Rodrigo "Sonata Giocosa" is a joking, or jovial sonata, poking fun at the dissonances of 20th century music, and employing many Spanish sound effects, especially in the final movement. Rodrigo also evoked the sounds of braying donkeys, bird songs and children at play. 

The final two pieces come from Assad's "suite aquarelle" which was his first piece for solo guitar, having mostly composed and arranged for his guitar duo up to that point. Since composing this piece, Assad has composed literally hundreds more guitar piece for solo guitar, and all imaginable combinations of other instruments with guitar or various numbers of guitars in ensemble.

"All of this music is close to my heart, and I often perform these selections, it is especially nice to share this music during this time of social distancing, as I feel it represents many moods and feelings and is always very intimate, an atmosphere that we all miss these days," said Bolshoy.

The concert was filmed with the help of the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, which was filmed on December 1, 2020 in Montreal, Canada, by Olivier Magnan and sound engineer Bernard Slobodian.

The concert will be premiered for free on January 13th. The cancellation of concerts this fall has created many challenges for the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. If you are interested in making a gift to support our efforts to make a UGA education possible for all of our students, please considering making a gift to our Thursday Scholarship Fund. If you have questions about giving to the Hugh, please contact Sara Emery: semery@uga.edu.