Music and Dance Reviews : Elgart-Yates Guitar Duo in Beverly Hills Concert

The Elgart/Yates Guitar Duo have developed a low-profile musical practice that can be satisfying and versatile, once you discover it.

Guitarists Matthew Elgart and Peter Yates gave an intimate concert at All Saints Church in Beverly Hills on Friday night, in celebration of American Music Week.

On the whole, they play with an unassuming style that is understated in a positive way, but at the same time boldly emphasize unusual, often overlooked music. Lacking passages of soaring virtuosity or anything that would rouse the spirit or cause foot-tapping, the duo opted to fit the delicate acoustical surroundings of a small, Spanish-style chapel.

Theodore Norman’s transcription of Busoni’s “Chamber Fantasy on ‘Carmen’ ” provided the evening’s only example of Spanish guitar music. Sections of disintegrating tonality surrounded stark quotes from Bizet’s opera in a substantial work that brought out Elgart’s and Yates’ best resources.

An encore, Joseph Klein’s “Icarus at the Cabaret Voltaire,” found the duo at their most avant-garde extreme. Scrapings, tappings and shouting dominated the absurdist composition delivered with a reserved but apt amount of craziness.

Two transcriptions of improvising Madagascan musicians, “Valiha I & II” (1987), by New Zealand ethnomusicologist Jack Body, oddly mixed tonality and a serendipitous New Age sensibility while Elgart’s “Capriccio in Two Movements” (1987) brought out a varied vocabulary of guitar effects and melodic ideas which the guitarists synchronized with few flaws.

The rest of the fare consisted mostly of miniatures, including Frank Campo’s rigid, academic study on abstract, contrapuntal ideas, “Vignettes for Guitar Duo”(1988), two pieces for partially prepared guitars by Elgart and Yates themselves, and Three Pieces (1979-84) by Larry Simon.