Une Bonne critique du concert de San Antonio

Guitarist returns, is more mature

Web Posted: 02/10/2007 10:28 PM CST

Mike Greenberg

Express-News

When the brilliant young classical guitarist Judicaël Perroy appeared in the 2003 Southwest Guitar Festival, his recital prompted adjectives such as "intense, "driven," "impetuous," "willful."

After four years of maturing, like a fine wine gaining complexity and balance, Perroy made an altogether different impression on his return to the festival Friday night in the UTSA Recital Hall.

In a thoughtful program, Perroy at age 33 showed considerable refinement and taste without losing a whit of his gift for instrumental color and digital velocity.

The printed order of the program put J.S. Bach's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro between two works influenced by Bach — Agustín Barrios Mangoré's most famous piece, "La Catedral," and Manuel Ponce's "La Folia" Variations and Fugue, an important landmark of the 20th-century literature.

On stage, Perroy at first decided not to play the Bach, but then performed it as an encore. His tempos and dynamics were beautifully but subtly shaped. It was a direct, unfussy performance, but full of life.

That same clarity and organic flexibility informed the whole program. Perroy brought a wonderful sense of line to "La Catedral," with impressively even execution in the bustling final movement. His astonishing color range served to define the distinct character of each of Ponce's variations and to delineate the voices in the fugue.

Perroy also made a strong case for Fernando Sor's Grand Sonata No. 2 of 1827.

A Parisian critic famously dubbed Sor the "Beethoven of the Guitar." If that phrase overstates Sor's importance — and the same critic goofed badly in dissing Berlioz — there is a grain of truth in it.

Sor was a near contemporary of Beethoven's, and both composers pushed the Mozartean envelope they were born into. Sor didn't push nearly so hard or so far, but Perroy's intelligent, poised account of the Grand Sonata revealed that Sor was not just a lightweight.

mgreenberg@express-news.net