[Harp-L] Louisville Orchestra review printed out



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courier-journal.com > Scene > Arts and Leisure Friday, February 1, 2008 MUSIC REVIEW | Robert Bonfiglio All hail the mighty mouth organ

By Andrew Adler
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Courier-Journal Critic

The Louisville Orchestra's current subscription program is tantalizingly unconventional. Not because of what opens it -- Respighi -- or what closes it -- Brahms.

No, it's what comes in the middle that throws the whole affair delightfully off-kilter: Villa-Lobos' Concerto for Harmonica played by Robert Bonfiglio, a man for whom the term "indefatigable" seems utterly insufficient.



Dressed entirely in black, with hair hanging down to his shoulders and legs that at any moment threaten to propel him into the air, Bonfiglio wields his Hohner chromatic harmonica as an instrument of expressive extremes. You might not expect a harmonica to be capable of such bold contrasts, whether in shading of dynamics, bending of pitch and exceptional articulation, but there it is.

Villa-Lobos' 1946 concerto is a staple of the classical harmonica repertoire (yes, there is classical harmonica repertoire), and Bonfiglio has performed it often enough for the core to be ingrained in his soul. The piece is fundamentally gentle-natured, spinning out its phrases with an unforced, intrinsic lyricism heightened by winking sprightfulness.

Occasionally the outer movement veers into passage-work that seems busy for its own sake, yet with an interpreter as sympathetic as Bonfiglio, who cares? Certainly not yesterday's listeners at the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall (many of them from area high schools), who clearly couldn't get enough of the Man in Black (apologies to Johnny Cash).

Bonfiglio obliged with cascading scales and multiphonics, suggesting double- or triple-stopped strings of a violin, yet here cupping the harmonica to produce a remarkable array of vibrato effects. Though he was miked, the amplification wasn't so extreme that you thought the harmonica had landed in your lap. Its sound, its manner, constantly beguiled.

Guest conductor David Lockington led the LO musicians in sympathy both to their soloist and to the composer's delicate sectional balances. Bonfiglio returned for no fewer than three encores: foot- stomping, body-bending blues numbers that declared, "Roll over, Villa- Lobos!" -- or at least, "Stand aside while I get down."

Respighi's "Brazilian Impressions," three shimmering, precisely wrought movements that stand in marked contrast to tone poems like "The Pines of Rome," was compromised a bit by some tentative attacks by the woodwinds and trumpets. No quibbles, though, about the account of Brahms' Third Symphony. Lockington urged the piece ever-forward, and the musicians responded with playing that offered plenty of sinew without trampling the composer's expansive impulse.

LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA WITH ROBERT BONFIGLIO, HARMONICA
Management: Joseph Pastore, Jr.
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http://www.robertbonfiglio.com









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