Caballero Returns to TGS Stage Feb. 25

Large-scale orchestral works are his stock in trade
By Paul Bonner

Even many devotees of our favored six or so strings stretched over a box, acknowledging its inherent limitations of volume and intonation, might be inclined to agree with the early 19th century critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who wrote of a guitar concert that never had he heard anything so perfect played on so imperfect an instrument.

But Reichardt never heard Jorge Caballero, whose wizardry extends beyond a perfect sound to a perfect embodiment of the guitar as just about anything he wills it to be. Often, this exercise in multidimensionality creates in the mind’s ear an entire large symphony orchestra — a sort of Everything Everywhere All at Once musical experience. Such was the case in 2013 at his last TGS recital (of as many as three or four TGS prior engagements), when Caballero performed Kazuhito Yamashita’s arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

On Saturday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Church of the Good Shepherd, 3471 Garrett Road, Durham, Caballero returns, and likely again with a similarly titanic undertaking: an arrangement of Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World. The program may also include an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Flute Partita in A minor, BWV 1013, and Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, originally for keyboard, BWV 903.

Tickets are $14 for TGS members in good standing and $20 for nonmembers. Members are invited to a reception following the concert at TGS President Randy Reed’s house in Chapel Hill. Masks are recommended for concert attendees. Click here to purchase tickets (TGS members please remember to enter the discount code) and obtain more information or here to also pay an annual membership fee. Members should have received a ticket discount code by email.

Caballero also will lead a masterclass on Sunday, Feb. 26 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Reed’s home. As of this writing, two performer slots remained. Those wanting to attend as a performer or observer may contact Reed at rreed@duke.edu.

Besides orchestral works, Caballero also is adept at adapting piano works to the guitar, such as Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor, which he is preparing for performance later this year. He has also arranged Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner suite and Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1.

Born in Peru, Caballero now lives in Canada, where he teaches guitar at the University of Toronto.

From his website bio: Born into a musical family, Caballero began his guitar studies at the age of 10 at the Preparatory Division of the National Conservatory of Music in Lima, Peru, with Eleodoro Mori, and years later, with Oscar Zamora. Jorge Caballero returns to Durham Feb. 25 with his outsized realizations of orchestral works.

At age 12, he tied for First Prize at the Conservatory Guitar Competition, which included participants at the college-level division more than twice his age. The following year, he earned Second Prize at the Peruvian National Guitar Competition sponsored by Jeunesse Musicale, competing in the adult category. His first international award occurred in Montevideo, Uruguay, at the First Latin American Guitar Competition. He was 15 years old. Additional awards include top prizes at the Luis Sigall International Competition, as well as the Tokyo and Alhambra guitar competitions.

In 1996, at the age of 19, he earned First Prize at the Walter W. Naumburg International Competition in New York City, a unique award for musicians often compared to the Pulitzer Prize. To this day, he is the youngest musician and only guitarist to have ever received this award.

Besides arranging, Caballero composes. Of a recent work, O King Dreaming, he writes: “[It] was written between June and September of 2020 as a kind of epitaph that renders tribute to the countless victims of racial violence throughout the world. As evidence of racial violence metastasized throughout the United States in the summer of 2020, I reflected on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. His most memorable statement, ‘I have a dream,’ loomed as a moral indictment in contrast to the reality faced by minorities around the world.

“The year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Italian composer Luciano Berio wrote a remarkable work in his memory, titled ‘O King,’ which later became part of his 1968 Sinfonia. Taking the sounds of that work as a point of departure, I sought to reflect on the state of Dr. King's dream. After more than half a century of his legacy, is it his dream the one this world lives? And if not, in whose dream are we living?” A YouTube recording of the piece is here.

Another of his own compositions, Midsummer Love Serenade, has been compared with Leo Brouwer’s “aleatoric compositions such as Cuban Landscape [with Rain],” according to a 2018 review by The Boston Musical Intelligencer, and thus evidence of Caballero’s own reverence for his Latin American roots.

Regarding orchestral music for guitar, Caballero offers a revealing demo on not only the technical problems encountered but also the ingeniousness that goes into replicating various instruments’ effects and interactions in Dvorák’s New World Symphony in a Facebook recording titled “The Guitar as Orchestra.”

The arrangement, also by Yamashita, entails “technical problems layered on one another” throughout the piece’s 36-minute length, Caballero wrote, which include such effects as playing the strings behind the nut while maintaining a bass line and percussive effects. Caballero also demonstrates a tricky, very fast passage in the fourth movement that has treble triplets against the bass in a 3-against-2 pattern.

That is followed by a slower section that demands legato — in all, a tour de force that calls upon the full technical spectrum of a world-class player, which he undoubtedly is.

The Florida State University Guitar Society’s (Randy Reed’s alma mater) website relates in a 2015 article that in 2009, “Caballero was called at the last minute to replace John Williams at the 18th edition of the Iserlohn Guitar Symposium, one of the most important guitar festivals in Europe.” And it quotes a review of the concert: “From the first note, [Caballero] revealed a perfect mastery of guitar and music.” Another review is quoted as saying, “If I had not shaken hands with him, I would not have had the certainty of having seen a human being. … The guitar proved to be a universal instrument with unlimited possibilities of orchestration and better than any other instrument.”

Not that Caballero has neglected the more conventional corpus of the guitar’s repertoire. The FSU Society also states: “Mr. Caballero’s repertoire is notable for its breadth and scope: When he applied to the conservatory, his teacher suggested that perhaps he should list the pieces that he did not play, since there were so few of them. It ranges from Bach to Ginastera, from Paganini to Ponce, from Scarlatti and Dowland to Giuliani and Legnani, from Renaissance pieces for the vihuela to modern composers like Carter, Berio and Ferneyhough.”

In all, TGS members who have attended one of Caballero’s previous engagements aren’t likely to have forgotten his amazing skills and presence. Those who have yet to discover them are in for a treat that they, too, are bound to remember for years to come.