Concert Review: New York Carnegie Hall Debut For Vladislav Blaha, Classical Guitarist

On November 17th, the New York classical guitar community was treated to a rare concert appearance by the classical guitar virtuoso from the Czech Republic, Vladislav Blaha. Mr. Blaha performed a two hour program commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, a historic turning point in that nation's history during the later part of the 20th century. The evening's performance consisted of a fine mix of compositions by Czech composers Milan Tesar; Leos Janacek; Antonin Tucapsky and Stepan Rak. This program was further supplemented by works of Jorge Morel (Argentina-USA), Nikita Koshkin (Russia), Manuel de Falla (Spain), John W. Duarte (Great Britain) and Carlos Jobim (Brasil), the later presented as an encore selection.

Mr. Blaha, a resident of Brno in the Czech Republic, brilliantly performed each composition flawlessly, without the visual distractions (to the audience) of written music, music stands nor microphones. As part of Carnegie Hall's world class reputation as a classical music venue, the Weill Recital Hall is as acoustically perfect as the most discriminating artist could desire. Absence of aural distractions further enhanced the performance. Any slight retuning of the strings was done in between songs and was accomplished in no more than several seconds, a testament to the quality of the instrument. As an interesting side note, Mr. Blaha performed on one of the new double-top classical guitars equipped with Savarez strings built by Lubos Naprstek originally from the Czech Republic, presently living and building finely crafted instruments in his Hamburg NJ shop. Mr. Naprstek is rapidly gaining a solid reputation as one of the successful newer builders of high quality upscale classical guitars. The sonority, tone and projection of this particular guitar was utilized to its fullest potential in the hands of Vladislav Blaha; and in turn, brought out the most subtle dynamics of this master's touch. Mr. Blaha, at 57, holds a unique position in the international classical guitar community. Being relatively youthful, he is able to attract the much-sought-after younger age demographic of both student and classical guitar enthusiast, and yet he is old enough to be perceived as a senior master of both the instrument as well as the idiom. I sincerely hope that New York City will host a return engagement on any future US tours undertaken by Mr. Blaha.