Luis Guillermo Perez: Concerto for double bass & piano

About the Concerto

Luis Guillermo Pérez’s Concerto for double bass and piano, or chamber orchestra, is a vibrant and energetic work which is a great addition to the concerto repertoire. The three contrasting movements portray a wide range of moods, emotions and colourful sound worlds, with musical and technical challenges in equal measure, emphasising both the lyrical and virtuosic possibilities of the solo double bass.

The accompaniment is rhythmic and animated, creating an exciting and high-spirited backdrop which remains vital and vigorous to the end. The confident and impressive outer movements contrast music of a more relaxed and lyrical nature, allowing the soloist to portray melodies of a more sonorous and mellow character.

The piano accompaniment is available for both solo and orchestral tuning

The Concerto is also available with orchestral accompaniment. Please contact Recital Music for more details: solodoublebass [at] gmail [dot] com 

Table of Contents

I - EPIC - This movement features three contrasting themes - the first, which gives the movement its name, has a choral texture with an ostinato bass note on the note E. Then comes the leggero, a livelier theme, rhythmically and harmonically active with fast scales and time signatures that change from 5/8 to 6/8, giving it a joyful, dance-like quality. These two themes give way to a third, slower, expressive theme. Short bridges or links between themes, a solo cadenza, then the initial theme and the coda appear, with phrases from the leggero.

II - Song without Words - Of a markedly nostalgic character, this is a monothematic movement originally written for guitar. Three bars of introduction precede the soloist's entrance. Near the end (poco più mosso), the melody is accompanied in a major key, changing the mood slightly until bar 66, where a Neapolitan sixth harmony returns to nostalgia. The coda begins at bar 73 (meno mosso), with the soloist concluding with a high harmonic.

III - Return- In Allegro 6/8 time with rhythmic chords for 6 bars, they precede the soloist's entrance with broken arpeggios that resolve into sharp double chords, then the piano enters with the initial chords alternating until moving to a mido minor theme in 2/2 time. Here, quaver dialogues appear between the soloist and piano. This is followed by a cadenza between the two, returning to the initial theme. The Epic theme reappears as a coda, along with a fragment of the leggero from the first movement, to conclude the concerto.

[Programme note by Luis Guillermo Pérez]

About the Composer

Luis Guillermo Pérez was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela in 1954. He graduated as a classical guitarist from the “Vicente Emilio Sojo” Conservatory in 1980 and began his double bass studies with Volmar Laubach in 1978, and later with Joel Novoa at the “Simón Bolívar” Conservatory in Caracas, in 1984.

He has been Principal Bass with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Lara, from 1989 until the present day, and has participated as a guest double bassist with the Orquesta Simón Bolivar in their tour in France “Festival Radio France” in 1986. He was the Assistant Principal Bass with the Orquesta de los X Juegos Panamericanos (Indianapolis, 1987), in the 50th anniversary of the Orquesta Sinfónica (1992), with the Bach Academy from Stuttgart conducted by Helmuth Rilling (1994), and in the premiere of the piece “A flowering tree” by John Adams in Vienna (2006).

Luis has worked as professor of double bass in Venezuela and in other Latin American countries, and now teaches at the Universidad Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado UCLA and in the “Vicente Emilio Sojo” Conservatory.