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Exhilarating World Tour With Guitarist John Williams

Scott Cmiel on October 19, 2010
John Williams

Classical music advocates often take a Eurocentric view of music history that leads them to question the importance of the guitar and its repertoire. In a recent Classical Voice interview, John Williams deftly reverses the logic. He maintains the guitar may be limited when seen from the perspective of 19th-century Europe, but from a global 20th- and 21st-century perspective the guitar makes a more vital contribution than any other instrument. Williams made his case on Sunday with an exhilarating recital of music from Latin America, Africa, and Australia, sponsored by San Francisco Performances and the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts and enthusiastically received by a packed audience.

As a boy, Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos played the guitar in street bands at weddings, carnivals, cafes, and theaters. As a young man he became fascinated with the music of Brazil’s indigenous people and joined a scientific expedition that canoed up the Amazon to learn the music, instruments, and ceremonial rites of Indian tribes in the area. Although Villa-Lobos went to Paris in 1923 “not to study, but to show what I have accomplished,” the textures and harmonic practices in the music of Debussy made a profound impression on him. His music became an engaging combination of Brazilian popular styles, indigenous Indian music, and European classicism.

Five Preludes express the essential atmosphere and spirit of Brazil. Prelude #1 (Lyric Melody), with a melancholy melody on the low strings and later lively celebration of Brazilian folk music in the upper register allowed Williams to adjust his exquisite tone to the acoustics of the hall — and to ravish his audience from the very first moment. In Prelude #2 (Homage to the Rascals of Rio), he highlighted humorous pauses in the opening phrases and later a dramatic melody in the bass, accompanied by virtuosic arpeggios on the upper strings. Comprising the emotional heart of the set, Prelude #3 (Homage to Bach) has a dirgelike tempo and employs chromatic harmony; Williams played it slowly and expressively, like a Sarabande in a Bach Suite. Prelude #4 (Homage to the Brazilian Indians) opens and closes with a mysterious melody that Williams colored with an expressive vibrato; its middle section, which Williams played with breathtaking speed, evoked an untamed jungle wilderness. And finally, Prelude #5 (Homage to Social Life) is a joyous, urbane portrait of the musical nightlife of Rio de Janeiro. Williams’ effortless mastery of the difficult shifts of position allowed him to create a picture of a glittering waltz.

Another featured composer was Leo Brouwer, who was born in Cuba in 1939 and has achieved fame as a composer, conductor, and guitarist. The quality, variety, and number of his compositions for guitar have made him an influential figure whom Williams calls the most successful living guitar composer. Brouwer gives his works evocative titles like El Decamerón Negro, after a collection of epic love stories from the great tribes of Africa. The Harp of the Warrior refers to a tale of an ancient hero who sings of the agony and exuberance of battle with his blood-stained instrument. The Flight of the Lovers Through the Valley of Echoes and the Ballad of the Young Maiden in Love tell evocative stories of romance and passion. Williams deftly contrasted energy with lyricism, sensuality with nostalgia, and programmatic imagery with pure musical imagination.

The early-20th-century Paraguayan composer and guitarist Agustín Barrios was underestimated in his lifetime because of European chauvinism; outside Latin America, he was virtually unknown. The second half of the 20th century has revealed the narrowness of a Eurocentric view and has led to a renaissance of interest in Barrios. Ironically, his masterpiece in three movements, La catedral, is an undisguised homage to Bach, as well as a portrait of a visit to the Montevideo Cathedral. Williams’ gorgeous tone in the highest registers of the guitar gave the Preludio a delicate and ethereal beauty that captured a religious sentiment almost too perfect for this world. Williams evoked the grandeur of Bach’s organ music heard in the magnificent cathedral in the Andante religioso and the bustle of a busy street life outside the church in a frenetic Allegro solemne.

The program of mostly Latin American music was completed with music from Africa and Australia, along with one of his own compositions, From a Bird, which begins with a literal transcription of the song of an Australian honeyeater bird and expands into three lovely movements. After a floral offering and a boisterous standing ovation from the audience, Williams played as encore two arrangements by Alirio Diaz of the Venezuelan folk songs Como llora una estrella and El totumo.