Last night St. Mark’s Lutheran Church hosted the latest video shoot for the Live from St. Mark’s concert series presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. The performance was a solo recital by Ukrainian classical guitarist Marko Topchii. Over the course of about an hour, he presented an engagingly diverse repertoire.
The one lengthy work on the program was the opening selection, Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 996 lute suite in E minor. One of my more memorable observations was the way in which he was able to make the Courante movement sound like a dance, a rare occasion for any of the many performances of Bach’s instrumental music. Furthermore, as one would have hoped, Topchii added embellishments (albeit limited) to any repeated passage. This was music performed as Bach would have wished, even if the instrumentation was different.
The Bach selection was complemented by George Frideric Handel, but not in the expected way. Leo Brouwer’s “La Gran Sarabanda” is basically an elaborate fantasia based on the Sarabande movement from Handel’s HWV 437 keyboard suite in D minor. Brouwer structured this relatively short piece as an introduction, followed by a theme (the Handel source) and a set of variations, concluding with a coda. Topchii’s approach to Brouwer was followed by another nod to Bach himself in the performance of Alexandre Tansman’s “Passacaille,” following the Bach structure of a set of variations on a stately theme concluding with a fugue.
The other works on the program written for guitar were by Joaquín Rodrigo (a toccata), Arnaud Dumond (an homage of sorts to Maurice Ravel), and Angelo Gilardino (one of the études collected in his five-volume Studi di virtuosità e di trascendenza). That étude was challenging unto an extreme; and the combination of both listening to and watching Topchii rise to all the challenges was a jaw-dropping experience. In addition, the opening Bach suite was followed by one of Topchii’s arrangements. This selection was a solo piano composition by Valentin Silvestrov (also Ukrainian). Topchii performed the first in a cycle of five pieces given the collective title Kitsch-Music. This turned out to be a reflection on sentimentality with very few sharp edges of irony.
Topchii did not announce his encore, but I was fortunate enough to track down the details. The offering was “Un Sueño en la Floresta (Souvenir d¹un Reve)” by Agustín Barrios. I have encountered this music in the past, and I have become familiar with Barrios’ works. However, I am still only beginning to associate titles with performances!
Taken as a whole, Topchii’s performance provided just the right balance of a secure command of challenging technique with a broad scope of expressiveness. In the course of only an hour, the attentive listener encountered no end of opportunities to occupy both mind and emotions. I shall do my best to let readers know when the resulting video will be available for viewing!
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