Translation from the Review of Eliot Fisk's Concert for the Europäosche Wochen, Passau, Germany

“The Man from Mars with the Mutated Fingers”
by Ariane Freier
Passauer Neue Presse

The Man from Mars was here. He wasn't small and green. Rather he wore a white suit with a red ascot as if he'd come straight from an Italian palazzo: Eliot Fisk. On Wednesday evening the extraordinary guitarist from Philadelphia brought Italian flair to the Pochinger Glass Factory and emitted at least as much energy a s the glass factory's oven does heat.

For the third time following appearances in 1989 and 1996 this brilliant artist was once again guest of the Europäische Wochen and for the third time he held his audience spellbound. At Fisk's level it seems pointless to speak of a “flexible technique” –— his technique has already been brought to perfection. Rather one speaks of the art of interpretation in it noblest form. One speaks about the excitement of discovering completely new aspects of long familiar music. Thanks to his extraordinary ear, his ability to analyze musical structures, Fisk brings out melodies and voices as only a Bach or a Paganini might have intended. His left hand fingertips attach themselves to the fingerboard while his right hand sweeps over the strings like a tornado. Like a magician he seems to pull life itself out of the instrument.

Not even expert violinists manage to play Bach's C major sonata, BWV 1005, with such breathtaking virtuosity as Eliot Fisk in his transcription for guitar. The Baroque master's longest Fugue is crystalline; the Largo cantabile and the Allegro assai are simply overwhelming. What seems easy for Eliot Fisk is for other guitarists not even playable, not only because his left hand fingers are actually longer than those of his right hand! The one time pupil of Andres Segovia is always experimenting. He becomes one with the music he is playing whether it be the Frescobaldi Partite sopra l´Aria detta ‘la Frescobalda,' an early baroque model for Bach's celebrated Goldberg Variations, or the late honorary President of the E.W. Luciano Berio´s Sequenza XI, dedicated to and tailor made for Fisk and combining the best of old and new. Here Fisk displays the entire palette of the guitar's expressive possibilities: after a gentle introduction the work explodes in a musical high wire act that omits no technical finesses. An encyclopedia of guitar playing performed by the Professor at Salzburg's Mozarteum and Boston's New England Conservatory with incredible ease but also with deep inner feeling and striking accents. At its conclusion fittingly enough, the “diabolus in musica,” a simple tritone or diminished fifth.

Together with Mauro Giuliani's Grande Overture, Op. 61, composed in best Rossini style, and 4 melodic Sonatas of Donenico Scarlatti where one thinks one is hearing the silver tones of a harpsichord and 4 Capricci from Paganini's Op. 1 — these transcriptions belong to Eliot Fisk's “heavenly plan, when there is time enough to practice.”  Once again the audience is fully captivated by an almost extraterrestrial power. Fisk rewards the audience with five encores including a Mexican folk song, a Fandango, and an homage to his late friend Berio, a transcription for solo guitar of the violin duet called “Aldo” and dedicated to Berio´s friend, Aldo Benici, violist and director of the Academia Chigiana in Siena, a work full of tenderness and transparent harmonics. The Man from Mars was here.