Robert Hugill has written a nice review of Sam Cave’s CD “Refracted Resonance”, which features my two guitar sonatas. You can read the review here:
https://www.planethugill.com/2022/05/magical-places-sam-caves-refracted.html
Hugill writes of my first sonata:
George Holloway’s Guitar Sonata was written for Sam Cave and the work explores the contrasts between clouds of harmonics and normal fretted chords. The work also uses microtonal tuning of the strings in order to access “certain spectral harmonies that imitate the pitches of the harmonic series.”
Holloway’s sonata, like the Murail, is concerned with the details, the evocative small things. His use of harmonics means that the sound world is aetherial and spectral. He also uses quite a remarkably complex rhythmic layout, which Cave makes into a wonderfully free line.
Regarding the second sonata, he writes:
Holloway’s Second Guitar Sonata was inspired by his experience of the Trinity Church of Gergeti in the shadow of the Mount Kazbegi in Georgia. Not just the beauty of the place, but the extraordinary dry acoustic of the church. The piece is haunting and rather beautiful, experimenting with the way the notes die, the material very free indeed.
In actual fact, it was not the acoustic of the church that struck me, rather the acoustic of the space outside the church, on the cusp of this mountain plateau. It was a truly serene and extraordinarily quiet place, and the “dryness” I refer to was from the lack of any large vertical structures in the vicinity– we really were right out on a kind of a ledge in the mountains. There were enormous mountains all around, but the distances were so vast, none of them reflected any sound back at one. A very magical place to be.
I’ve recently composed a new piece for Sam, which he has recently started learning. I’m excited to hear how it sounds, when he has a substantial portion of it ready to play for me. Read more about the new piece here (currently only in Chinese! An English translation to follow):
「Felix namque」的吉他創作項目：由吉他演奏家Sam Cave委約的新獨奏作品“bountiful”（《穰穰》）已完成（2022年）
More on the two guitar sonatas and Sam Cave’s performances/recordings:
“Refracted Resonance”- Sam Cave’s Seminar in Brunel University, 11th December 2019 (late upload)