Review: Duo enchant at prize winning concert

A new venue, full house and two charming young guitarists for a simply delightful evening of Spanish, Argentinian and Brazilian music.

The musicians, Julian Vickers and Daniel Bovey, met at the Birmingham Conservatoire and are both individual winners of the Conservatoire’s Guitar Prize.

As winners of the Leamington Music Prize 2014 they are invited to take part in the successful music education programme, with visits to seven schools in the forty-eight hours before the celebratory concert.

No doubt the schools enjoyed the duo’s creativity. So, too, the concert audience enjoyed the innovation they showed in their transcriptions of works by Albéniz and, Granados - both pianists and composers.

Albéniz’s Suite espaňola depicts the different musical styles and regions across Spain, something the duo most effectively portrayed.

The Granados’ Valses, considered to be some of the most beautiful works for the guitar repertoire, were most sensitively played.

Rodrigo’s Tonadilla and Piazzolla’s Tango Suite provided the duo with opportunities to demonstrate guitar body percussion and golpé (smacking the strings) in a second half full of intrigue and innuendo, something one associates with exports from the country where Piazzolla reinvented the tango!

Vickers and Bovey gave an enchanting encore, another delicate new composition by Ryan Probert. They will be very welcome back in Leamington.

Rating 9/10

By Clive Peacock