[Harp-L] Lincoln Center Review



NEW YORK TIMES

RIVERSIDE SYMPHONY - Even by its own adventurous standards, the Riverside Symphony is offering an offbeat program tomorrow. The most eclectic item is Villa-Lobos’s Harmonica Concerto. The harmonica virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio says he has performed the work more than 350 times. I’ve never heard it. Have you? Here is your chance, on a program that also offers Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony and Honegger’s Neo-Classical Symphony No. 4 (“Delights of Basel”). (Tommasini)


Arts and Letters Classical Music January 23, 2007


Allow me to relate the details of an excellent performance at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday evening in which the Riverside Symphony invited soloist Robert Bonfiglio to perform the final composition of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.


Villa-Lobos was a charming raconteur and a bit of a gadfly in 20th-century music. His most famous set of pieces is the Bachianas brasileiras, which combines the ordered cleanliness and counterpoint of Bach with the exciting rhythms of South America. He wrote over a thousand works in all sorts of forms both popular and classical, was an ardent ethnomusicologist who collected material in the heart of Amazonia, and once claimed he had been captured by cannibals who put him in a stewpot, only to release him after he sang his music to them. His piano pieces for Artur Rubinstein made him famous throughout the classical world. And at the very end of his long life, he created the Harmonica Concerto for an American named John Sebastian.

The piece begins in medias res with a great deal of energy. Mr. Bonfiglio brings much energy to the stage and demonstrated this night a great deal of conversance with the piece, making a strong case for his signature role as its champion.

The middle Andante is especially beautiful with a powerfully lush orchestration. The orchestra is an equal partner in this movement and executed quite well, combining their relatively small size with a great deal of romantic, full-bodied sound. There is always the hint of the exotic in Villa-Lobos and conductor George Rothman captured it here with unhurried chordal accompaniment.

Mr. Bonfiglio takes the final Allegro faster than he did when he made his recording and this works well, as the newfound propulsion emphasizes the dance rhythms of this section. Villa-Lobos resists the contemporary urge to gild the rhythmic lily with a load of percussion instruments, employing instead but a few judicious strokes of the timpani as he allows the music to develop organically. I'm afraid I don't know my Portuguese, but in Spanish Latin America this music might be classified as ranchero style.

As became clear at the end of the concert when prospective buyers stormed the table where Mr. Bonfiglio's CD was for sale, the near capacity audience was genuinely enthralled with the novelty and impact of Villa-Lobos.

By FRED KIRSHNIT
NEW YORK SUN


http://robertbonfiglio.com/main







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