Were we? - Lukáš Sommer
A guitar album „Were we?“ is actually a time lapse documentary. It includes melodies and ideas from my beginnings as a composer that changed considerably over the time.
Suite in the Old Style is honour to Czech musicians, lutenists and choirmasters – with each movement we travel deeply into the past until the final From the Depths which is a kind of a dark mirror in which one can vaguely recognize melody of a plainsong. Fugue and Dance I wrote while thinking of Dmitry Schostakovich. How would 24 fugues for guitar look like? I have fullfilled the imaginary A minor with this composition. With Song for Lili I celebrated the conception of our daughter Julie. I wanted to give her a first melody of her life, hopefully cheerful. Three Melancholic Preludes are some kind of a summary of instrumental thinking – a composer shold not be afraid of conscious continuation of the breathtaking history of instrumental literature. The introductory prelude Do Not Leave Me… connects Catalanian rhythms with a painful chromatic melody full of please of forgiveness. Legend about Viktorka originated as a scenic music that accompanies the tragic fate of the woman in Jaroslav Seifert´s poem. The final prelude Were we? is dedicated to my friend, a poet Vít Slíva, an author of a painfully concise poem. The composition Hommage à J. Rodrigo has the subtitle Por caminos de Sagunto (On the Stairs of Sagunto). When I first played this composition in Sagunto, the people of this charming town took me for an old friend. The album is called Were we? and I myself ask this question often, for example in the last Second Letter to Father.
Other compositions by Lukáš Sommer published in Czech Radio:
Thanksgiving
Fantasia bucolica
Concerto for Harp and Orchestra
Impromptu
Canzona e tocatta per chitarra