This is a guest post by: Alexander Dunn
Concert review – Janet Grohovac
St. Barnabas Church Sunday Concert Series
January 8, 2012, Victoria, BC
Guitarist Janet Grohovac performed a beautiful solo recital organized by the Victoria Guitar Society and the St. Barnabas Church series. Ms Grohovac is a ‘daughter’ of Victoria, having studied at the University of Victoria before moving on to graduate studies in Austin. She is now in the midst of her doctoral studies and is successfully teaching in the Austin area. She represents a group of very talented players that have begun their musical training in Victoria, and have gone to various parts of the world to establish excellent performing and teaching careers.
Ms Grohovac began her program with Etude #8 of Jules Regondi, played with great lyricism and accuracy. The etudes are notoriously difficult – and this reading was handled with aplomb. Next was a set of Spanish pieces – Junto al Generalife of Rodrigo, and Leyenda of Albéniz. The Rodrigo forms part of an imaginary suite based on locations in southern Spain, and was played with a rich, dark sound, and beautiful musicianship, handling its tremolo demands with good control. The Albéniz was played very well, but for my taste I find this work to be still far too overplayed. A better programming choice would have been a Rodrigo companion piece such as Tiento Antiguo, Bajando de la Meseta, Pajaros de Primavera etc. A Barrios set of Julia Florida and Un Sueño was very fine indeed, with great attention to detail and good dramatic sweep. After intermission, the prelude and fugato from the Lute Suite BWV 995 formed an appropriate start to the second half. Duarte’s The Swan from The Birds suite, was given am exemplary reading, and proved to be a surprisingly nice piece. Finally, the Turina Sonata ended the program, given good dramatic utterance and pacing. I noticed that the old Segovia edition was used, which is definitely inferior to a newer edition. For example, Segovia contains some wrong notes and has an unnecessary tuning for the second movement. Nevertheless, the performance was strong and convincing. In general, Ms Grohovac is a player with great lyricism and draws a beautiful sound on her Connor guitar. At points, more propulsion or rhythmic drive could have been imparted to passages in the Bach or Turina, but as a whole, the recital was musically rewarding and technically sound. We look forward to hearing again this fine ‘daughter of Victoria’ and watch her career unfold with great interest and admiration.
