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The press material released in anticipation of Mr. Lakatos's concert last Friday night read more like the stats for an athlete rather that a musician. Multiple references to his speed, acrobatics and technical clarity were found in all of the preview materials and his biography in the concert program. And no one in the audience that evening could possibly have had any doubt that he was the "devil's fiddler" that his press kit trumps him to be. 

Lakatos arrived onto the stage with an assortment of Eastern European musicians dressed in loosely cut long jackets and oiled-back black hair. The 'devil' himself wore black leather pants, a shiny purple coat and rhinestones wherever they could be fastened (even on the fine tuners of his violin!). He also possessed a magnificent handlebar mustache that Dalí himself would have envied.

With the exception of a few melancholic heart-breakers, the ensemble played music so fast and furious that one felt as if they were on a reckless horseback ride for over two galloping hours. I work regularly with two violinists from Lakato's area of the world. One is from the Ukraine; the other from Romania and they both excel in this over-the-top virtuosic genre. Unfortunately for me, I always get to play what I call the "boochie boochie" accompaniment part on the guitar and the violinists get to have all the fun. 

Audiences love these pieces for their exotic tonalities, rapid shifts in sentiment and accelerating tempo to a wham-bam finale. The Carlsen Center audience was given this treatment by the truckload as Lakatos and his equally masterful colleagues ripped through virtually all the of standard "classical/gypsy" show pieces including Deux Guitares, Liszt'sRhapsodie Hongroise, the Czardas of Vittorio Monti and Ochi Chornye (Dark Eyes) as an encore.

I have had the great fortune that two of my own teachers have been of gypsy heritage.  The Roma (gypsy) relationship with music and performing is a very complex one. Often what most people think of as "gypsy" music is not the music they play for themselves in their own homes. What we non-gypsy audience members in the café's and concert halls see is really a mixture of 19th century Fritz Kreisler virtuosity and stereotypical theatrics. 

The Roma musicians are full of working "hustle" and will always find pleased audiences wherever they are performing. Enormous musical dynasties exist where the overbearing Mozart father-son relationship is the norm. One of my teachers lamented to me once of the great shame he felt because his beautiful daughter was pursuing a career in the medical field and was no longer going to be the dancer she had trained from birth to be. You cannot imagine the drama this caused in his family. The music the Roma retain for themselves, is just as culturally reversed as my teacher's feelings about his daughter attending medical school. It is wholly unmarketable to the typical American or European mindset, and is related only to the Roma. Ideally everyone should experience authentic Roma music and these days it is becoming much easier to find it via adventurous world music labels and the internet.

The musical instrumentation of Lakota's ensemble would be familiar to almost anyone except for the Eastern European cimbalom. (Personally, I could listen to the cimbalom for weeks on end.)

The cimbalom is an instrument indigenous to Hungary and the surrounding area. It's part Turkish kanun and hammer dulcimer encased in the body of a 19th century German piano with lathed legs, ornately carved floral motives and a sustain pedal. It is performed with two hammer-like sticks in a more or less monophonic fashion with a technique resembling a marimba player with only two sticks. Jeno Lisztes is an absolute master of this instrument who was given much liberty to shine throughout the night. I found him to be much more engaging than Lakatos. 

On the opposite end of the stage from Lisztes was pianist Frantisek Janoska who added a distinctly modern jazz approach to the ensemble. It was very evident that all of the musicians on stage could play jazz very well and all exhibited true facility and taste in the genre. Janoska also had an inclination to launch into grandiose Liszt -like cadenzas that would incite the other musicians onstage to giggle at their extravagance. The combination of the cimbalom and piano is one of the most interesting timbres I've heard. I never experienced this combination when I was in Hungary or on any of the recordings that I own, but I would attend this concert again solely for that sonic experience.

 As for Lakatos, I've never been a fan of excessive athletic playing and I've had my fair share of playing next to devil violinists. The program did wear thin after the fifth or sixth note avalanche. I realize that it is probably what the audience expected of Lakatos, and what he expected the audience to want from him, but do we really want to hear the theme fromYentil played by such a master, or listen to yet another Czardas?

I suspect there is something more in this exceptional ensemble of Roma musicians that could have transcended what everyone in the concert hall expected -  including the expectations of Lakatos himself.
 

REVIEW:
Carlsen Center at JCCC
Roby Lakotas
Friday, January 23, 2009 at 8 p.m.
www.jccc.net/home/depts.php/001440/site/Chronological_Listing

By Beau Bledsoe

New Classical and Flamenco Contributor

Beau Bledsoe, musician and composer, is a founding member of the well-known Argentine Tango quintet Tango Lorca and the independent record label Tzigane. He has toured throughout the United States, across Europe and in Russia, Mexico and Argentina. His recordings are regularly featured on Radio1 BBC, "Segovia a Yupanki" Radio Nacional Argentina, and "All Songs Considered" on National Public Radio. He is also co-founder of the flamenco music and dance school Manos Rojas and the flamenco dance company Esencias Flamencas.

Bledsoe did undergraduate work at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and completed the graduate guitar program at the UMKC Conservatory of Music. He has studied independently in southern Spain and in the tango scene of Buenos Aires with masters such as Antonio Andrade, Miguel Rodriguez, Santiago Aguilar, Pedro Cortez and Luis Heredia of La Repompa de Málaga.

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