Paul Galbraith, whose Sunday recital at the Florence Gould Theater was sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, is a unique figure in the classical guitar world. Winner of the Segovia International Guitar Competition and the BBC Young Musician of the Year Award in 1981 at age 17, he began giving concerts throughout Europe regularly. An unusually thoughtful young man, he subsequently withdrew from concertizing for several years to rethink his relationship to the guitar, technique, interpretation, and music itself.
The most dramatic result was his development, in collaboration with luthier David Rubio, of an entirely new instrument: an eight-string guitar that is held like a cello and uses an end-pin attached to a resonating sound box. The more subtle result is a repertoire that is heavily weighted toward transcriptions of music written for other instruments.
Galbraith had ambitions as a pianist and, seven years after his first phenomenal success as a guitarist, he abandoned the instrument to make a serious attempt to become a professional pianist. Although he put this ambition aside, three of the five works presented on Sunday were originally written for piano. Although I had reservations about the results heard in his recital, I realized that Galbraith is a thought-provoking artist.
The most persuasive of the transcriptions was Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 2 in F, K. 280. Written in 1774 when Mozart was 18 years old, it is among his first mature compositions, and Galbraith gave it a refined, expressive performance. The opening Allegro assai was both vigorous and classically balanced, the Adagio was heartfelt, and the concluding Presto was appropriately playful. Galbraith's performance of the sparkling passagework was amazing and yet seemingly nonchalant. Less interesting was an Andante cantabile, a lesser piece ascribed to Mozart but of dubious origin.
Also played was Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 5 in A Flat, D. 557, written when the composer was only 19 and trying to come to terms with the intimidating precedent set by Beethoven. In three movements, it is usually considered incomplete because the third movement was composed in E flat and it is unlikely that Schubert wanted the work to conclude in a different key from the first movement.
In any case, the sonata is full of beautiful music, and Galbraith's playing of it was as meticulous as his interpretations were stylish. The opening Allegro moderato alternated between vigorous fanfare and sentimental introspection; in the Andante, a muted but touching melody frames a wild passage featuring running 16th notes in the parallel minor key; and the closing Allegro showed Schubert's ambition by its similarities to Beethoven's contemporaneous piano sonatas.