MUSIC REVIEW : Fernandez Quietly Dazzling at El Camino

The maturation of the guitar from a salon instrument into a fully equipped and self-confident concert vehicle is apparent in Eduardo Fernandez’s career and programs. The Uruguayan has never been one for the musical lint that still clogs many guitar recitals, relying instead on big pieces by modern masters.

That was true again Tuesday, when Fernandez returned to El Camino College where he made his local debut 12 years ago. He brought a compact agenda, conceptually as well as technically tough.

Fernandez himself seems to have matured. Where muscle and energy once dominated his technical and interpretive resources, finesse now rules. Much of the program was played at feathery dynamic levels, sovereignly controlled. The concentrated silence with which the small crowd in Marsee Auditorium listened, particularly after intermission, was a tribute to the compelling power of this uncompromising approach.

Not that Fernandez came without bravura thunder. For those who like a lot of loud, fast notes, there was Berio’s long and daunting “Sequenza XI.” The guitarist focused its abstractions on structural goals, and blew past all the hurdles with quick, pertinent point.

“One Thousand and One Faces,” commissioned by Fernandez from Colombian composer Ana Torres, is a multifaceted post-minimalist exercise, with some explosive right-hand gymnastics. It ends, though, in an extended fade, which Fernandez directed with such supreme purpose that he controlled his audience long past the threshold of audibility.

Brouwer’s “Paisaje Cubano con Campanas” shares many features with Torres’ piece, in a distinctive sound world dominated by harmonics. Fernandez projected its patterned intricacies with agility and quiet elan.

Liquid sound gracefully deployed served Takemitsu’s “All in Twilight” well. Fernandez caught all the jazzy implications without descending to parody or kitsch, in a reading of remarkable lyric poise.

The sheer unobtrusive effortlessness of Fernandez’s technique allowed all of these very difficult pieces to impress in their own right, subtly shaped by the guitarist. He proved equally expressive in the more traditional “Tema Variado y Final” by Ponce, one of the less commonly encountered bulwarks of the Segovian repertory.

Fernandez is still stylistically innocent in early music, as evidenced in his bland accounts of four ricercars by Francesco da Milano. Unforced calm carried them as far as a simple mechanical presentation of the notes could, opening the concert.

The lone bonbon on the agenda was at least an attractive rarity, Sor’s “Fantasy on a Favorite Scottish Air.” Fernandez’s constant fussing with tuning--a recital-wide affliction acerbated by the different scordaturas used in several of the pieces--and some rare technical smudges minimized the slender impact of this music, otherwise pleasantly delivered.

Fernandez worked with the scores throughout, looking something like a parlor magician behind the low black-draped table that served him as a music stand.

But there was no trickery here. He said not a word, went off stage only at intermission, and offered no encore. All he did was present challenging, refreshing music with an authority that may live in the ear as long as his overwhelming Ginastera Sonata from a decade ago has.