Gunter Herbig: seductive landscapes for guitar

Guitarist Gunter Herbig made the transition from classical to electric guitar

Composers John Cage, Isaac Albéniz, Peter Sculthorpe and Douglas Lilburn, featured by guitarist Gunter Herbig on his new album Flower of the Sea, would probably be delighted by his creative re-interpretations of their music on electric guitar. Yes, that’s right, electric guitar. “Poetic ideas don’t always start in poetic circumstances,” Herbig says. His transition from classical to electric guitar “filled me with a renewed sense of adventure and new horizons to explore. In my locked down home [in 2020] my journey to new and reimagined places began.”

Herbig was born in Brazil, grew up in Portugal and Germany and has lived in New Zealand since 1989, performing, recording and teaching classical guitar in several of our universities.  His latest album takes its title from one of Douglas Lilburn’s Canzonas, four short works originally written for string orchestra. Lilburn himself transcribed his first Canzona for guitar and Herbig takes plenty of time to unfold his own meditative transcriptions of the other three, revealing the music in all its romantic and nostalgic beauty.

Flower of the Sea (Rattle)

Gunter Herbig’s new album explores new horizons

John Cage’s In a Landscape opens the album. Written in homage to Erik Satie while Cage was at Black Mountain College in the late 1940’s, the almost minimalist cyclic repetitions were intended for piano or harp with sustaining pedal depressed throughout. Like Cage’s  Dream, one of the other album tracks, the piece accompanied Merce Cunningham’s dances. Cage suggested the purpose of music was “to sober and quiet the mind”; played on electric guitar, these pieces are perhaps less delicate than Cage intended but evoke the Balinese gamelan that influenced the American composer.

Herbig’s careful choices of works for transcription and his considered, highly expressive performances reveal a thoughtful, creative musician. His playing of Peter Sculthorpe’s Djilile is slower than its piano original but by lingering over the guitar colours he allows the music to communicate strongly.  

Since André Segovia first transcribed Albéniz’s piano piece Asturias, it has become a favourite of classical guitarists and audiences. This and Mallorca by the Spanish composer are particularly successful in Herbig’s transcriptions, his wide range of electric guitar timbres, daring pitch-bending and an intimate close recording approach drawing the listener into seductive musical landscapes.

FLOWER OF THE SEA Gunter Herbig (electric guitar), produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Dick Le Fort. Available from Rattle.

This album review first appeared in NZ Listener, issue 25 June, 2022