“Guitarist Mowad can come back anytime”

 

       “Lou Mowad is an explorer; as he plays his guitar, he seems to be asking himself, "What can this marvelous instrument do for me next?"

The  first half of his recital was devoted to J.S. Bach - the Suite in E-minor, BWV 996, and the Fugue, BWV 1001. Mowad's performance had absolutely nothing to do with Baroque performance practice. Without sighing and swooning, it was un-ashamedly romantic.

   His way with the suite was magical: a free and improvisatory prelude, a delicate allemande in which he seemed barely to touch the strings, a saraband given to mulling over past regrets, a resolute bourree.
  In the fugue, he employed the tonal variety of an organist testing his instrument's stops. Each episode had a different character, first mysterious, then striving, then searching. It was as if Bach had handed the fugue to Beethoven for a rewrite. Mowad's gently nuanced manner is naturally suited to the Spanish repertory. His sole Iberian foray was Joaquin Turina's "Fandanguillo." Slowly and rhapsodically, Mowad appropriated the music as his own; he could have been improvising in the style of Turina.

    He brought his usual warmth and sense of wonder to a pair of contemporary English works, Sir Lennox Berkeley's "Theme and Variations" and a partita by Stephen Dodgson.”
By James Reel The Arizona Daily Star