Story for a Never Ending Night

"First of all, this is a major work of considerable length. The YouTube performance by the dedicatees, Koki Fujimoto and Hiroshi Kogure, runs to nearly eleven minutes and is certainly the place to start if you and your partner are thinking to invest in this work. The main thing to understand about this piece is that it is not just difficult, it is exceedingly so and requires a top-notch duo. Any less and I guarantee that you would struggle. The musical style veers from almost impressionistic, reminding one very occasionally of an altered Debussyan feel, to one of extreme modernism, where you struggle to follow the musical harmonies you are hearing / playing. It begins with a weary sounding opening with a deliberately off key note that is played with a downward glissando. This 'motto' recurs a number of further times, along with a theme in long notes that enters for the first time a few bars further on, firstly at bar 27. Then suddenly the notes drastically shorten and both players are rushing headlong into semiquavers, then sextuplet semis, then demisemiquavers. This passage requires great care. A brief respite from the 2nd motto, leads to a passage in 12/8 written in quavers at an alarmingly fast speed of 180-dotted-crotchets-a-minute. The harmonies and cross rhythms make an unusual sound here and the logic of the work is difficult to follow at this point. However it leads swiftly to the opening motto theme before an unusually complex arpeggio pattern on Guitar 2 underneath longer notes on Guitar 1 leads to a strummed section and an extended climax that takes in a number of ideas seen previously. The slow section suddenly returns and everything dies away over an extended harmonic section, deliberately leaving you in mid-air at the final cadence. Very complex, hugely difficult and yet there is a lot of interesting music here which an extremely talented duo might really enjoy and therefore as such this piece can be recommended as quite an achievement. "

Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)