The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

The title of Pablo Márquez’s latest release is intriguing – ‘The Well-Tempered Pig’ – and requires explanation. ‘Cuchi’ was the apparently affectionate nickname of Gustavo ‘Cuchi’ Leguizamón, (1917-2000), one of Argentina’s greatest contributors to the ‘boom del folklore’ in 1960s Buenos Aires. Márquez, who hails from Leguizamón’s birthplace of Salta, has taken some of the composer’s folksongs and arranged them for solo guitar while ensuring he ‘visits’ every key through the use of eight different afinaciones (tunings) – hence the reference to Bach’s Forty-Eight.

 

Márquez is always a thoughtful, imaginative player, as supple as he is subtle, across a wide range of genres and periods from Renaissance to contemporary. Here, however, he is on home turf; and there’s a natural fluency to playing which seems somehow warmer, freer and more instinctive than on those previous recordings I’ve had the pleasure of hearing.

 

As with the tango, there is often little distinction between dance and song, and the majority of the ‘songs’ here are in the form of a zamba, an Argentinian dance of Peruvian origin in compound time (it is no relation to the Brazilian samba). Whether it’s in the stippled palette of the opening Coplas des Tata Dios, the darker-huedCarnavalito del Duende or the mellifluous Zamba para la Viuda, Márquez’s arrangements abound in the colouristic use of various devices such as tambora (striking the strings with the side of the hand), rasgueo (strumming),glissandos, and simple harmonisations in thirds or sixths which open out into flowing arpeggios or skilfully voiced chords.

(https://www.gramophone.co.uk)