Now, as the pandemic drags on, last semester’s Oberlin Conservatory performance policy remains in place: that the only live audience permitted in the room with the performer is the teacher, and that the performances will be attended by live-stream only.

Sophomore Suvan Agarwal found an ingenious workaround: play his concert off campus. As sophomore recitals are not official Con-sponsored events (we call them “ad hoc”), this decision was his to make. A friend had been working with a local church on a recital series in their sanctuary, and he arranged to be featured on the series. The church is taking all necessary precautions: taping off two rows for every row available, eliminating aisle seats, hand sanitizer everywhere, etc., etc. But they permit a live audience. The room is enormous, so people have plenty of room to spread out. Suvan used the Guitar Studio amp to boost his sound in the large, carpeted space, to good effect, and managed to attract some 30 people from the community, grateful to see live music!

Suvan played a program featuring four multi-movement works: Barrios’ La Catedral, Diabelli’s Sonata in A, his own arrangement of (a Bach arrangement of) a Vivaldi harpsichord concerto, and two movements of the Sonata of Leo Brouwer. (The full program is reproduced at the end of the post).

The program was expertly prepared. Suvan has a way of tossing off the complicated, fast passages as if nothing happened—he’s very cool under stress and makes it look absurdly easy. The final coda of the Barrios, for instance, spot-on and perfectly shaped, as if played on piano. His management of the technically hard parts of the Diabelli, too, suggest a deep well of skill. Most remarkable was his deadpan handling of the highly complex passages in the Vivaldi keyboard concerto, rendered by his own pen for the guitar into webs of breathtaking counterpoint.

Most remarkable, though, was Suvan’s lyricism when playing the slow movements. There was lovely phrasing and tone evident in the Barrios, but in the slow movement of the Diabelli and the Vivaldi, Suvan really stopped the clock and compelled a deep listen as he made his guitar truly sing. I think we have an artist in our midst!