Adagio in G minor - Paul Landry

Review by Kerry Barnes

“Adagio in G minor”
Performance and
Arrangement by
Paul Landry

Introduction

Baroque meets Prog Rock!! How polar opposites could they be!!
This piece with it’s famous melody has two great men at it’s core. Firstly Tomaso Albinoni, the composer that everybody thinks wrote this piece, and the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto who actually did!! But we have another great man at the helm, the guitarist Paul Landry, who gifts this music with atotally new framework.

Lets explore....

I doubt any other musician has taken Adagio to these dizzying heights before, and it really works, on all levels. 
I must admit, I don’t know much about the two out of three instruments at play here, one being the ‘mellotron’ and the other vsti synths ’ .....as I am a humble piano lady, and the only accompaniment I get is next doors cat!!
Anyhow they sure do produce an amazing backdrop for this equally amazing solo electric guitar work, guitar work that wails and weeps, sings and sighs with this melody made in Italian Baroque heaven.

The structure of this beautiful music is very similar to J.S. Bach’s famous “Air on a G String”, especially in the bass writing which has that iconic sound of jumping-descending-octaves, tenderly in ‘pizzicato’ and probably played by
double basses and cellos. So that very German sound has travelled to Italy for further treatment! (at least I think that way round!)

Harmonically saturated and full bodied, this piece is 6.20 of passionate bonding with Paul’s instrument, he coaxes, caresses and pulls the guitar to his chest, bending the sweet sound of the neck. I know this classical tune very well, plus it’s inversions at the bottom, and Paul has deliciously decided to blur these edges to glorious effect and it really works! Quite dark in mood, a melancholy call-and-response takes place and is intensified with unison - playing between guitar and synths,
very ‘Floydian’ indeed.

Paul cleverly breaks this work up into sections, like episodes of a concerto- grosso, everyone gets a turn if you like, and makes further entries of electric guitar even more pulsating. I love the brightness of Paul’s guitar playing, so clear and lends itself beautifully to the ascending and descending melodic motifs.

I really admire the ‘vibrato- technique’ at the ends of phrases here, perfect for this very sad tune. When I started learning the violin as a kid that was the one thing I just could not do.....my hand, wrist and arm just would not play the game, and the violin sounds pretty awful without that ‘vibrato’ sound, consequently I gave up in the end!! .....so bravo Paul for getting that out of your instrument!!

The most important note in any minor- tonality scale is the raised 7th (apart from maybe the flattened 3rd) and Paul has it in abundance as he whizzes up and down that fret board. His arrangement of this Albinoni piece
sounds wonderfully improvised, it speaks to us clearly about the almost painful message delivered, and all through my life I’ve sung this tune but it now means much more to me, communicated to me dearly.

Thank you Paul.