It's
rather an amazing work, reminiscent of the Bach lute suites. I don't think
we have much music as intensely contrapuntal as this is and with a wonderful
passacaglia in the middle. It falls into a clear classical form, and has
themes repeated in a very accessible way; and despite the dense quality
of the counterpoint the tunes come across very nicely.
David Starobin, interviewed in Guitar International, March 1985
One of the best pieces in Starobin's programme was Bayan Northcott's Fantasia for Guitar (1982). This emulated the formal principles evident in fantasias by Mozart and Beethoven, though not their inventive proliferation or rhetorical flourishes. Each episode of Northcott's composition was neatly crafted: an intimate Andante (of which there was a brief memory at the close), an Allegro cogently developing characteristic guitar figurations, a slow section on a ground bass, and a return of the allegro leading to a gracious siciliano. Altogether, music which perceptively used the instrument to the full, while firmly delineating its own territory.
Meirion Bowen, The Guardian, 6 November 1984
The recital early on Friday evening by the American guitarist David Starobin, noted as a champion of contemporary music for his instrument, comprised four first broadcasts of works by British and American composers – the most substantial being Bayan Northcott's Fantasia and Elliott Carter's Changes. The Northcott is an agreeable, civilised discourse, by turns conversational and argumentative, contrasting grave two-voice polyphony with mercurial scurryings and repeated-note flourishes; its central climax, an increasingly elaborate and passionate invention over an ever-fluid ground bass, manages to combine both characters in a highly effective manner.
Calum MacDonald, The Listener, 28 March 1985
Bayan Northcott, in his less familiar guise of composer, provided the most enjoyable of the 'heavyweight' pieces. His Fantasia is not of the free romantic kind, but a tightly-knit work along Classical lines, in which a reflective opening and closing idea frames a number of more or less volatile sections with distinct characters, each section developing to a high pitch of activity before the next takes over. Much of the success of this piece lies in the linear simplicity of its complex harmony: the gamut of guitar timbres are worked into a basic two-part counterpoint, saving chords for climactic moments. If this suggests a Baroque unaccompanied suite, perhaps the passacaglia-like section pays homage to a more familiar Chaconne.
Jonathan Dove, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 November 1984
Bayan Northcott – like Berlioz, Debussy, and Dukas a critic-composer – releases only works that meet his exigent critical standards. His Fantasia Op.3 seemed in [Jonathan] Leathwood's performance a masterwork of imagination and intelligence.
Andrew Porter, The Observer, 17 January 1993
Bayan Northcott has long been established as a critic and writer on music, but he only began composing towards his forties. All the same, his Fantasia for guitar – a single movement span, lasting some nine minutes – must surely be one of the most accomplished opus threes ever written. Composed in 1985 for David Harvey, it has been performed intermittently in major venues, and recorded by David Starobin on his Bridge label.
Northcott describes the piece as 'an attempt to emulate the classical fantasia principle exemplified in such works as Mozart's little Fantasia, K297 and Beethoven's remarkable Op. 77 – in which an initial interplay of disparate ideas is rounded off not by the completion of any one of them, but by a balancing, fully-worked-out new section. The present Fantasia begins with an intimate Andante leading to an Allegro, the development of which is interrupted by the arrival of a Grave constructed on a gradually shifting ground bass. The abrupt resumption of the Allegro ultimately culminates in a Siciliano-like Grazioso, though (unlike K397, for instance) there is the briefest of recapitulatory codas.'
More recently, Northcott has sometimes seemed to play down the significance of these classical models. Yet it is certain that this Fantasia adopts a manner of presentation, a rhetoric, more closely based on classical principles than any other recent guitar piece. It is not so much that the choice of a Grazioso movement as the culmination and balancing point of the work is an exact expression of the classical aesthetic (which is pre-eminent not for colour or for weight of statement but for light) - for in fact the vehemence of the subsequent coda, brief as it is, overturns that balance in favour of a new overview. It is much more that Northcott binds together the whole design by a unity of motive, harmony, instrumental feature and even pulse; and yet he only makes this unity explicit and tangible to the listener at crucial points in the form (the climaxes, closes and boundaries of each section). At the climax of the Passacaglia, for instance, when the ground bass has been stretched to its limit, the surface abruptly throws up the initial Andante melody, the guitaristic tambura effect and the governing harmony of the work – it is at this point that the remote background is converted into immediate gesture.
This use of motivic relationships to signal form, but not to generate it, is very similar to the classical manner. But, as so often happens, the later composer has carried the principle far beyond the model, and in no sense is this a neo-classical piece. The final bar of the whole work, in fact, comes to rest on a tonality deliberately excluded elsewhere. Northcott has chosen not to maintain a strict unity to the end, but instead to find a conclusion more in keeping with the fantasia spirit.
Stainer and Bell have beautifully set and presented the work here for a very low price. One or two small errors have slipped through the proofs: in bar 11, the diamond-headed E# should be D#, and in bars 108–110, all but the last staccato mark should be deleted.
The publication of this piece is really a major event for guitarists, and it would be nice to think that the work will gain in popularity as a result. All the same, many more overtly virtuosic modern guitar pieces – Berio, Ginastera – are easier to bring off than this one, which requires the same control of contrapuntal voicing, the same variety of articulation in rapid passages, and above all the same interpretative technique as a Bach lute suite. Even the most confident sight-reader will find that the work takes time to show its full dramatic potential. Having worked on the piece myself, I have found that it more than repays the work needed and is a richly rewarding concert item which would sit happily alongside works by Dowland and Bach.
Jonathan Leathwood, Classical Guitar, July 1995