Music and Dance Reviews : Guitarist Stepan Rak in Pyrotechnic Local Debut

Stepan Rak is a nonpareil. The Czech guitarist is an artist and entertainer, a master of coffee-house schmaltz and acerbic fantasies, and possessor of an advanced, utterly idiosyncratic technical apparatus that redefines virtuosity on the instrument.

He made his West Coast recital debut Saturday night at Freeman Chapel of Pasadena Presbyterian Church, courtesy of the enterprising California Harp, Lute and Guitar Assn. He brought an almost unimaginably difficult program of his own compositions and arrangements, and might be playing still, seemingly fresher than ever, if the management hadn’t raised the house lights on him nearly 2 1/2 hours after he began.

Rak began with the anonymous Romanza dear to all intermediate students, which he quickly turned on its head, recomposed and sent fluttering on its way in double tremolo. That set the tone for the evening, which was filled with all manner of sentimental musical portraits and stories, given the most imaginative technical expression.

Trills and tremolos on two strings, lightning runs in all registers, explosive rasqueado and percussion effects, and the widest timbral variety of harmonics filled Rak’s bag of tricks, which he emptied out in almost every piece. All dazzled, but the strongest musically were the vehement, pseudo-folkloric “Sonata Mongoliana” and “Twighlight,” a nicely shaped and relatively understated nocturne given its world premiere.

Rak plays to his audience unabashedly. He introduced the numbers, telling stories in a soft, accented voice. He crooned along on one chorus of his “Balalaika,” and stomped through “The Era of Rock’N Roll,” a witty, free-wheeling, knowledgeable and affectionate parody complete with percussion solo.

Six other numbers completed the printed agenda, from the long musical soap opera “The Last Disco” to the Five Early Dances, Renaissance redux at warp speed. The basic language is thoroughly tonal, spiked with wild tremolo glissandos and angular chromatic punctuation--Villa-Lobos squared.

Two encores--a Rumanian dance that began as a left-hand stunt and ended in whirling blur, and an exuberantly kitschy improvisation on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”--ended the evening.