Ayman Jarjour - Guitar
16th January 2019 

Making a welcome return to Crieff, Syrian guitarist Ayman Jarjour once again attracted a large and appreciative audience to St Andrew’s Halls last Wednesday.

In the three years since his last visit the Society has enjoyed its customary wide variety of music, some intimate, some spectacularly virtuosic, but always with something to say to the heart and soul. Nothing different on this occasion on any of these counts – apart from that sense of being drawn in to a minutely and differently focussed reality which is unique to the classical guitar and demands a fundamental re-calibration of the scope and scale of our listening response. 

Exploring the subtle shades and colours of the traditional heartlands of the instrument the concert featured familiar Spanish composers (Tárrega, Albéniz, De Falla) alongside others from Paraguay, Argentina and Catalonia, even briefly diverting to the performer’s homeland with his own Variations on a Syrian Folksong, a brief but greatly affecting highlight of the evening. 

Add to the mix a musical personality of the utmost modesty and integrity, an effortless command of technique and repertoire, and a rare poetic sensibility, and you have all the ingredients to communicate, to please, and indeed to charm. Such music is the ideal and necessary counterweight to a wider world where we sometimes seem to have to shout ever louder merely in order to be heard. Ayman Jarjour achieves the utmost eloquence without raising his voice.

(Next concert: Steven Osborne, piano and Jean Johnston, clarinet. Wed Feb 27 at 7.30)