Presented by Adelaide International Guitar Festival and the Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed Saturday 11th August 2012
Simon Powis was not, as some of the other supporting artists seem to have been, a warm up act for the main artist. He is a great performer in his own right, and a fascinating counterpoint to Edin Karamazov. He opened with a most unusual piece, Benjamin Verdery’s Satyagraha, adapted from an Indian raga and occasionally incorporating short passages of that raga, even sounding, during those sections, quite like a sitar, thanks to his enviable performance skills.
On more familiar ground, he then played Isaac Albéniz’s Córdoba, Op. 232, no.4, his musical portrait of the Andalusian city, with its opening reference to the Great Mosque of Córdoba. His technique is marvellous but, more importantly, he captured the Romantic mood of the piece beautifully. A technically challenging piece from Armand Coeck, Constellations, brought us to South America again, with Baden Powell’s Samba em Preludio and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Felicidade. That was a very good choice to close his part of the concert, both as a chance for us to see how much warmth he injects, and the dynamic range that he employs in these pieces, giving them a distinct interpretation of his own.
Edin Karamazov is a charismatic and endearingly quirky character, with a massive amount of talent, imagination and skill. He began his concert by playing two works on an Italian Archlute, made in 1685, before switching to the guitar. Originally training as a guitarist, he later switched to the lute and is a much sought after performer on that instrument. His renditions of Giovanni Zamboni’s Sonata, and J. S. Bach’s Chaconne, both from 1720, were quite magical and exceptionally well received. At the end of the first movement of the Sonata most of the audience began to applause, to which he raised his hand, immediately stopping the applause, and his facial expressions somehow made them realise what regular concertgoers take for granted, that one applauds the work as a whole, not each individual movement.
His playing on the lute was phenomenal and the sound of the instrument in his hands is quite amazing, well beyond what one can hear in recordings. Let’s hope we get to hear more of this instrument in Adelaide in the not too distant future, hopefully as well played as it was in this concert.
Switching to guitar, he presented a nicely balanced and varied set, from Fernando Sor’s arrangement of Mozart’s Variations Op. 9, to Valses, by Barrios, and to Leo Brouwer’s El Decameron Negro. His sense of humour could be seen in his grin as he announced that he hadn’t played a guitar concert in twenty years, and that he liked us as an audience, because we didn’t mind him making mistakes, and there were a few.
This collection covered a wide range of styles and eras, enabling us to see his enormous versatility, and technical abilities. When playing, he becomes completely absorbed in the music closing his eyes, straightening up on lyrical passages, and bending ever lower on intense passages, his head often vanishing behind the instrument. It is rare to hear such impassioned playing as this.
Karamazov was not going to get away that easily and, after returning several times to bow to the ongoing applause, he offered an encore, giving the audience the choice of instruments. An overwhelming vote for the archlute brought forth an appreciative smile and another opportunity to listen to his mastery of the instrument.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
Venue: Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide
Season: One performance only
Duration: 2hrs 10mins incl interval (advertised time 2hrs)
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