Brave Guitarist Who Takes Chances
The New York Times
February 11, 1999
By: Allan Kozinn
Jorge Caballero, a Peruvian guitarist who completed his studies in New York, won the Naumburg Competition in 1996, when he was 19. He had by then already won several competitions in South America and had considerable touring experience, and when he gave his New York debut recital in 1997 as part of his Naumburg Award, his unusual combination of a deft, powerful technique and a soft-spoken interpretive persona made a strong impression. Those qualities were intact in a second recital sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation on Tuesday evening at Merkin Concert Hall. More important, Mr. Caballero has grown as an interpreter, and he showed that he was not afraid to take chances. His account of Sor's ''Fantasie Elegiaque'' (Op. 59), for example, began with an unusually clipped reading of the opening bars, something that created a dramatic effect that was later offset by passionate introspection. Elegies are often played as pretty, sentimental laments, but Mr. Caballero pointed up the form's other currents, from anger to eventual acceptance. He also demonstrated an interesting approach to musicological niceties. In a group of variation sets written by Luys de Narvaez for the vihuela, a fragile-sounding ancestor of the guitar, Mr. Caballero reveled in the comparatively robust tone and broad palette afforded by the large body and nylon strings of the modern instrument. He made no concessions to the vihuela's sound world, and listening to his fleet renderings, even a fan of period instruments could think of no reason why Mr. Caballero should have done otherwise. Period style, in any case, has components that are more important than timbre, and Mr. Caballero was conscientious about adding ornamental flourishes where the music allowed for them. Much the same can be said of his stunning performance of Bach's Sixth Cello Suite (BWV 1012), heard in his own transcription. As in the vihuela works, the notes were taken as absolute values, divorced from the bowed timbre of the cello. What was gained in Mr. Caballero's virtuosic performance was extraordinary contrapuntal clarity and a kind of electricity very different from the sort a cellist delivers. Mr. Caballero also gave a vividly shaded reading of Luciano Berio's ''Sequenza XI,'' and he nicely characterized accounts of the five portraits in Asencio's idiomatic ''Collectici Intim.'' Back To Reviews |
