Sweet Suite

The young American guitarist Jason Vieaux is an exceptionally communicative artist. On Saturday he presented an interesting, well-shaped program, with expressive playing and friendly, informative spoken introductions, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall. Interested in expanding the guitar repertoire, Vieaux performed his own arrangements of music by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and a Suite by contemporary Argentine composer José Luis Merlin, as well as works by Bach, Albéniz, and Brouwer. The recital, presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, was mostly a delight.

The evening began with two selections, Cuba (Capricho) and Asturias (Leyenda) from Suite Espanola, Op. 47, by Isaac Albéniz. Vieaux captured the jaunty insouciance and passionate ardor of Cuba with a precise attention to rhythmic subtlety and a sensually beautiful tone. In Asturias he emphasized the well-proportioned dynamics and Baroque inspiration of the opening and the deep feelings and introspection of the central section. After playing, Vieaux told the audience that he had built the first half of his program around these two opening works. Albéniz, it turns out, had visited Cuba and absorbed its musical atmosphere as a young man, and in later studies he became fascinated by the music of J.S. Bach, which provided the initial inspiration for the composition of Asturias. The next pieces on the program would feature music of Bach and of Leo Brouwer, Cuba's best-known composer. Brouwer had a huge impact on the classical guitar repertoire in the second half of the 20th century. He began his career in the 1950s at a time when Andrés Segovia's dominance of the guitar world had produced an extremely conservative repertoire centered on Spanish nationalist composers. Brouwer wrote a great amount of highly successful music in which he sequentially explored his love of Cuban popular song, of modernist composers like Stravinsky, of avant-garde composers like Penderecki, and finally of American jazz and minimalism. Brouwer's first piece of this final period is El Decameron Negro, an evocative, three-movement piece based on an Afro-Cuban folktale. "The Warrior’s Harp," in sonata form, tells of a young man who is banished from his tribe because of his desire to be a musician. "The Flight of the Lovers Through the Valley of Echoes" tells how the warrior and the girl he loves flee from their village. "The Ballad of the Young Girl in Love," a rondo, tells how the tribe is attacked by rivals and how the young man returns to his tribe, successfully defends it, and is ultimately accepted back into the tribe, which has found a new appreciation for his playing of the harp. The recurring sections of the rondo portray the love of the warrior and the young girl in a beautiful melody over an Afro-Cuban rhythm. Vieaux showed exquisite control of balance and color in his performance of this melody and dance, capturing the excitement of the warrior's harp with his breathtaking arpeggios and telling the story of the lovers' flight with exquisite dynamic control.

Many Voices at Play

J.S. Bach's Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro is a late work of incomparable beauty. The prelude is in the improvisatory broken-chord style idiomatic to the lute and natural to the guitar, and features a lovely cascade of notes, which spring from a pedal bass. The fugue is grandiose and simple, calm at first as its stately theme unfolds into a great choir, including a sweet, falling-third motive. The middle section features murmuring 16th notes in which fragments of the theme pass from voice to voice. The Allegro is joyous music, dancing like a gigue. As in much of Bach's music the top voice feels like many voices, pursuing, questioning, and playing with each other. Under it the bass leaps with good humor, enjoying the play. Vieaux captured so many of these qualities that it's almost churlish to quibble, yet I was troubled by the ornamentation he included, particularly in the Prelude, which seemed to disturb the unforced spontaneity of the music. My other disappointment of the evening was in Vieaux's arrangements of the music of Pat Metheny. One of the most successful living jazz musicians, Metheny has developed a unique style that incorporates elements of rock, folk, and Latin music. In another engaging spoken introduction Vieaux told of his extracurricular introduction to jazz while a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music and his growing interest in Metheny's music. He played an excerpt of a fantastic arrangement of James, a song Metheny recorded with his jazz group. Vieaux then showed us how he altered the rhythms to turn the song into a modern version of a Baroque gigue. Sadly, the Five Songs in Baroque Style that Vieaux created using this method felt contrived and lacked the authenticity either of a Bach Suite or of Metheny's original arrangements. The recital concluded with a captivating performance of Suite del Recuerdo by José Luis Merlin. Vieaux played each movement — a sad "Evocación," an elegant "Zamba," and a fiery "Chacarera" — with exciting shifts from triple to duple time, a "Carnavalito" with strummed climaxes, and a final "Joropo" with authenticity and verve.