Jason Vieaux
A master colorist on the guitar
October 14, 2011The American classical guitarist Jason Vieaux brought exemplary technique and a vast color range to a solo program on October 10 in the ideal acoustic of the UTSA Recital Hall.
The intelligently chosen program touched several pinnacles of the guitar literature, including J.S. Bach’s Lute Suite No. 1 in E Minor, BWV 996; Benjamin Britten’s “Nocturnal after John Dowland”; and the inevitable “Asturias” and “Sevilla” by Isaac Albeniz, together with his less familiar "Torre Bermeja."
The printed program listed the Bach suite first, but Mr. Vieaux decided to open instead with “Sevilla,” in which he loosed a startling torrent of instrumental colors evoking bells, trumpets and the human voice, among others. One intriguing effect of the change in order was that the Spanish feeling seemed to linger into the Prelude of the Bach suite. In Bach, the colorations were more subtle, changing mainly with the character of each of the six movements. Here, Mr. Vieaux’s very free tempos (always honoring Bach’s rhythms, however) and highly expressive ornaments served to bring out the emotional depth of the music, especially in the sarabande.
Britten’s “Nocturnal,” composed for Julian Bream in 1964, comprises eight brief movements whose musical material is drawn from John Dowland’s “Come, Heavy Sleep,” which is heard in complete form only at the end. The music tracks the darting thoughts and hyperactive senses of the insomniac. The harmonic landscape shifts continually, most disturbingly in the passacaglia that leads into the Dowland song at the end. Mr. Vieaux beautifully exploited the bountiful coloristic opportunities and made the disorienting harmonic shifts utterly convincing.
The “Suite del Recuerdo,” by Argentinian guitarist-composer José Luís Merlin, dates from very late in the 20th century, but several of its movements are rooted in traditional dance rhythms, and it opens with a yearningly lyrical “Evocacion” that, in Mr. Vieaux’s performance, pierces the heart.
Mr. Vieaux brought excellent jazz feeling to lovely accounts of “The Bat” and “The road to You” by Pat Metheny, the important American jazz guitarist and composer. For his encore, Mr. Vieaux linked the first of Matthew Dunne’s recently published 20 Miniatures to Mr. Metheny’s “Letter from Home.” Not a lot of flash and dazzle in that pairing, but plenty of thoughtful beauty.
Mike
Greenberg
