Surveying our ecletic arts scene, from the galleries to the stage.
Guitar Guild Music Festival
8 p.m. Saturday
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, featuring Soloduo
$25
FORT WORTH -- Just as the Piano Texas and Mimir summer music festivals did, this week's Fort Worth Guitar Guild Music Festival highlights top-notch local and national performers who teach lessons during the day and play concerts at night.
Wednesday's recital at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth featured one of America's premier guitarists, Jason Vieaux. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music, records and tours nationally. (He'll play Rodrigo's popular Concierto de Aranjuez with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in October.)
His recital was one of the finest on any instrument I've heard in Fort Worth this year.
Vieaux's performances of classical pieces by Albeniz, Bach, Frank Martin and Leo Brouwer displayed unmatched virtuosity and poetic musicianship. His projected sound ranged from subdued whispers to aggressive roars, always with a singing, soaring tone. Articulations were precise and clear, revealing the progressive arc of melodies and the dancing pulse of underlying rhythms.
His strong, unerring fingers unraveled Bach's polyphony during the Suite No. 3 for Lute, a transcription by Bach of his Suite No. 5 for Unaccompanied Cello. Notes shone with different weights and hues; melodies were alive and recalled the nuanced beauty of light reflecting off a string of pearls.
Martin's Four Short Pieces for Guitar from 1933 blended modern atonal elements with traditional dances and character pieces. In Air, traced melodies were soft but perfectly defined, like the intersecting girders of a building. Earthy, insistent Spanish music echoed in Plainte, which ended in a star-burst and shower of sparkling sound.
The three movements of Brouwer's The Black Decameron re-created chapters of a West African folk tale. Vieaux conveyed authoritative flourishes and tender love songs with effortless grace. In Pat Metheny's The Bat, music was plucked with diamond crispness against serene chords.
Vieaux's performance spun magic. Rarely has a single instrument so clearly painted such cinematic vistas and searching introspection.
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