Reviews

All Recordings Solo Orchestra

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John Williams & Berta Rojas in Top Form at London Concert

Rojas is a champion of South American music, and especially that of her countryman, Barrios. Williams had invited her to play an all-Barrios program for her part of the concert, and she truly delivered.

Mark Small
Classical Guitar Magazine
[ ]
Barrios in black and white

John Williams might not be the first or foremost interpreter of the Paraguayan guitar maestro Agustín Barrios Mangoré (1885–1944), but he is certainly the best known. In the 1970s, Williams introduced Barrios’s music to audiences outside Latin America through television and concert performances and the album From the Jungles of Paraguay: John Williams Plays Barrios (1977). For a recording closer in spirit to Barrios’s own performances, though, you might prefer Berta Rojas’s Intimate Barrios (1998).

Dominic Green
[ United States ]

…an ambassador for the Classical guitar…

Tim Panting
Classical Guitar Magazine
[ England ]

…90 minutes maintained at the highest levels of performance and interpretation…

Colin Cooper
Classical Guitar Magazine
[ England ]

…Berta Rojas, guitarist extraordinaire

Mark Adamo
Washington Post
[ USA ]

Rojas clearly has Barrios" music deeply in her blood; playing entirely from memory, she traversed the composer's stylistic range, from the poignant "El Ultimo Canto" through classically inspired works like Estudio de Concierto…

Stephen Brookes
The Washington Post
[ USA ]

It was an unforgettable concert

Thérèse Wassily Saba
Classical Guitar Magazine
[ England ]
Berta Rojas: guitar elegance

It takes a skilled guitarist to toss off the demanding reaches in the Agustín Barrios classic "Un Sueño en la Floresta" while sustaining a fingered tremolo. The Peabody trained Rojas dispatched the song elegantly, with a tremolo like liquid crystal, so seamless that one could imagine a balalaika player had joined her onstage.

The Washington Post
[ USA ]
La Guitarra California Classical Guitar Festival

The fabulous and effortless manner of her playing coupled with the sensual quality of her phrasing provided convincing evidence that Barrios truly wrote for her alone to perform…

Charles J. Walsh
Guitart Magazine
[ USA ]

I came across Berta Rojas this year playing a Ginastera sonata with such inner strength and such a display of richness in guitar and musical techniques that I think she is inaugurating a new dimension in the emotional reach of this instrument.

Washington Roldán
El País
[ Uruguay ]

…Las Abejas were performed brilliantly …these insects in the hands of Berta Rojas, could rule the world.

Colin Cooper
Classical Guitar Magazine
[ England ]

…Expectations were exceeded at her eloquent interpretive maturity, in which nothing was left to chance, and wherein the dialectic between technique and expressiveness were synthesized in moments of sublime art. Despite her youth, Berta Rojas stands at the podium of the great Guitar artists

Aníbal Cardozo Ocampo
Diario Última Hora
[ Paraguay ]

…Berta plays in a nuanced, exquisitely way, with a limpid guitar sound, and a musical and instrumental transparency itself to the top performers. Carlevaro's, Fernández's and Payssé's worthy disciple, this guitarist has inherited from them a disciplined perfectionism, but she was able to colored it with her own instincts and her own nature, avoiding the danger of neatness becoming depersonalized

Washington Roldán
El País
[ Uruguay ]
Intimate performance

Rojas' dynamic sensibility allows melodies to develop organically, beginning with a mere whisper, growing to fruition then fading back into the shadows. Her ability to translate the beauty of Paraguayan music, from the elegant to the playful, makes her not only a cultural emissary as Paraguay's Ambassador of Tourism, but a captivating performer.

Brandon Cobb
The Stateman
[ USA ]

The beauty of Paraguayan music came in the hands of Berta Rojas. Impressive technique, voluptuous tone, ascending all the way.

Alberto Zúñiga
La Nación
[ Costa Rica ]

I came across Berta Rojas this year playing a Ginastera sonata with such inner strength and such a display of richness in guitar and musical techniques that I think she is inaugurating a new dimension in the emotional reach of this instrument.

Washington Roldán
El País
[ Uruguay ]
The Vieja Casona (old abode) Cradled Barrios once more

Moving concert by Berta Rojas at the home of Mangoré. It was as if the music had been locked up in the adobe walls and found freedom through her hands. Berta Rojas held the concert at the Casona Mangoré, the home where the great Agustín Barrios was born and lived his childhood.

Diario Noticias
[ Paraguay ]
Caaguazú received her with a Full House.

A true artist gives himself over to his audience, Barrios himself used to say, and she followed that maxim to the letter. From her soundbox, the guitar, she created a fountain from which music, color and magic emanated.

Diario Noticias
[ Paraguay ]
Berta Rojas deeply moved the Audience that filled the Basilica in Pilar.

Through the works of Tárrega, Albéniz, Savio and Juan Falú she demonstrated her enormous interpretative versatility, her great capacity to transmit the content of the works as well as her exceptional humanity and warmth.

Diario Noticias
[ Paraguay ]
Successful Recital by Berta in Villarrica.

In the second part, the audience"s love affair with the performer reached its pinnacle with "El Último Canto", "Cueca", "Maxixe", "Las Abejas" and "Ha che valle" by Mangoré.

La Nación
[ Paraguay ]
Rome Day and Night "Pizzicatti and Magical Arpeggios

Tribute to Latin American music. Applause and encore requests.

Il Messagero
[ Italy ]
Paraguay guitar icon gets standing ovation

The unbearable heat and humidity outside Meralco Theater didn't dampen the spirit of Manila's music lovers who gave Paraguay guitar icon Berta Rojas a standing ovation after the last section of Agustin Pio Barrios Mangore's "La Catedral," which left no doubt about the immense stature of the visiting artist.

Pablo A. Tariman
PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER
[ Philippine ]
Perfectly attuned

I have not watched another guitarist who could draw such warmly golden tones out of a piece of wood! Nor have I encountered a guitar more sonorous or more deeply throated; listening to this one guitar was equivalent to listening to a choir of them!

Julie Yap Daza
Tempo Philippines Newspaper Tabloid
[ Philippine ]

Reviews

All Recordings Solo Orchestra