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.
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).
…an ambassador for the Classical guitar…
…90 minutes maintained at the highest levels of performance and interpretation…
…Berta Rojas, guitarist extraordinaire
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…
It was an unforgettable concert
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 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…
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.
…Las Abejas were performed brilliantly …these insects in the hands of Berta Rojas, could rule the world.
…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
…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
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.
The beauty of Paraguayan music came in the hands of Berta Rojas. Impressive technique, voluptuous tone, ascending all the way.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tribute to Latin American music. Applause and encore requests.
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.
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!