Crítica de Alice Artzt sobre a estréia do Brasil Guitar Duo no Carnegie Hall

World Class Guitar Virtuosos in New York Debut
By Alice Artzt

The capacity audience that crowded into Weil Recital Hall in New York City on November 14th for the debut recital of the Brasil Guitar Duo showed that the word must have got around that this concert would be something very special.

And indeed it was one of the most memorable, impressive, and exciting concerts I have ever attended. These days, there are quite a lot of good guitar duos around. But not since hearing Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya in the 60s, and later Sergio and Eduardo Abreu who started performing in the late 60s, have I heard a guitar duo with such a combination of subtle musicianship, transcendental technique, and total mastery of a complete range of musical styles.

In this concert, Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora played a Scarlatti Sonata and their own arrangement of the French Suite No.3 by Bach with flawless technical virtuosity, beautifully and subtly shaped phrasing, a lovely warm tone, and a liberal sprinkling of elegant and absolutely stylistic ornaments. From that they went on to play one of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Preludes and Fugues, originally written for the Presti/Lagoya duo, and they did it with great panache, an impressive variety of tone colors and articulation, and all the warm romantic lyricism Castelnuovo-Tedesco could have hoped for. The rest of the concert was devoted to extraordinary performances of a variety of South American music.

One piece by Astor Piazzolla, as well as a number of Brazilian pieces, most either arranged by Joao Luiz, or composed by Douglas Lora, were all played with enormous rhythmic drive and accuracy, a big full tone even at mind-boggling speeds, and with accents and syncopations flying around with an impossible level of control. Paulo Belinatti’s “Pingue-Pongue” was a tour de force of virtuosity - a canon at the unison with the second player following the first with a delay of about a quarter note - the two players chasing each other at break neck speed through a formidable technical obstacle course. Their performance of Jacob do Bandolim’s “Doce de Coco” drew gasps of astonishment and delight, and thunderous applause, from the audience for the amazing subtlety and control of the dynamics of the performance. I don’t believe I have every heard any other guitarist play many strings of very fast notes descending to as absolutely breathlessly quiet a pianissimo, and then building back up to a very full fortissimo, time after time. The Duo brought a large pile of their CDs to the USA for this tour, but had sold all of them by the time of their NY concert. They managed to get another large pile of CDs to sell at the NY concert and all of those were snapped up almost instantly after the concert. These guys are a world-class phenomenon. If they play anywhere near where you are, run - do not walk - to hear them.