David Gregson

San Diego Arts

Robert Belinic, guitar

LJMS "Disocvert Series" Recital
By David Gregson
Posted on Oct 16 2005
Last updated Oct 16 2005

Have you ever seen a grown man make love to a guitar? Well, it’s a sight, let me tell you. And really something to hear -- that is, if your hearing apparatuses are in excellent condition.

I once “heard” the legendary Andrés Segovia in San Diego Civic Theatre. He was extremely proud of his art and refused to permit any electronic amplification. Nobody in that huge house could hear him very well, of course. I was in the balcony and had no binoculars. I recall everybody was extremely quiet (those were the days!) – and the experience was very moving. What Segovia looked like, I cannot say.

Yesterday afternoon, tipped off by a La Jolla Music Society usher, I took an up-front seat for Croatian guitarist Robert Belinic as he played a “Discovery Series” recital at the La Jolla Neurosciences Institute. “He’s so very expressive,” the kindly lady told me. “But in this wonderful acoustic environment,” said I, “we should be able to enjoy his fabulous expressivity in the last row.”

Turns out, she was talking about his musical performance only. His physical expressivity could be seen by a blind person in the last row of Radio City Music Hall. An angelic looking young man dressed in a black tuxedo with red bow tie, Belinic went through heavenly ecstasies as he played. At first he seemed to be humming along. Memories of the loony hum-along perfectionism of pianist Glenn Gould came to mind. But Belinic is clearly the real deal: a genius, a poet, a super-sensitive artist. Like Gould who could never get the piano stool to exactly the right height, Belinic tuned, and tuned and tuned and tuned and tuned that guitar of his. At times you weren’t certain when he’d actually started to play. And then, even in the perfect acoustical environment of the Neurosciences auditorium, a keen listener would have had to describe his performance as soft – very soft. Often pianissimo.

But also dazzling. Supremely sensitive. The man is a virtuoso, a poet and a perfectionist.

The program moved quickly from the predictable to the arcane: Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BMV 998; Fernando Sor’s Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 9; to Augstín Barrios’ La Catredal (with those 16^th notes flashing by with incredible delicacy) – and then the rather off-beat stuff: Ante Cagalj’s Three Croatian Pieces and Leo Brouwer’s Sonata for Guitar. Brouwer, one of Cuba’s leading composers, wrote this piece for Julian Bream, but it is solid 20^th-century modernism. Not the kind of thing you'd ever expect to hear on a guitar. Very interesting, I must say, but difficult to follow – so much so that many people in the audience were obviously turned off.

Belinic recouped all listener losses, however, with attractive and accessible encores: three pieces by Venezuelan composer Antonia Lauro, and a sort of Bossa Nova piece by Brazilian composer Jorge Morrel.

What a wonderful artist! But unless he learns to be less fussy about tuning in public, he may have more success on recordings than anywhere else. And the "avant-garde" pieces are extremely demanding listening, if only because they are so removed in style from what the average person associates with guitar music.

Download program

About the author: David Gregson has been an active and widely published commentator on the local music scene since the 1960's. He has contributed to many San Diego newspapers and magazines as well as to national and international periodicals.
More by this author.

Share this article

Subscribe to Arts

 · 

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article.

(1)sandiego.com, Inc. invites comments in which readers can respond freely and anonymously if they wish. Comments submitted by readers will be rejected that are deemed by the editors to be damaging to the future of this web site.
(2)Comparison is made from the IP Address identity of the computer placing the posts. Some networks share these addresses between users.