Saturday evening?s concert at St Andrew?s Church, the last in the series of the first Bermuda Guitar Festival, was as perfect as a concert could be.

It was in an inspired location, blessed with very good acoustics, large enough (almost) for the scores of guitar and music aficionados that filled the church, while maintaining an intimacy appropriate to a chamber concert.

Then the performers, the Katona Twins, Peter and Zoltan, whose intuition and synchronicity made one instrument of their two guitars performed with exemplary modesty and self-effacement, letting the music shine through the transparency of their virtuosity. The music was the thing.

And the music, ranging from the Baroque of Vivaldi , through Albeniz?s romanticism, to Tadesco?s modernism, was all that a lover of music for the guitar could ask.

And finally the audience, quietly knowledgeable, respectful and expectant, were effusive in their show of gratitude for the pleasure of having been so bountifully treated.

The Katonas, dressed similarly in black, were presented by the man most responsible for this festival, Steve Crawford, who deserves huge credit for having organised the festival. They opened with a Vivaldi Trio, with its wonderful Largetto, and straight away filled the church, without the aid of any artificial amplification, with their sonorous elegance. Music more so than any other art, I believe, has the evocative power to place us , imaginatively, within a bygone era. How interesting to think that we share with Vivaldi?s contemporaries, and listeners of later generations the experience of hearing his musical thought come to life again. This is true for all the composers on the programme of course, the great Argentine, Piazzolla being the most recently deceased, in 1992.

The guitar repertoire borrows generously from woks for other instruments, especially keyboard literature from the Renaissance onward. The twins chose to play a transcription of a Rossini Overture, that from ?The Thieving Magpie?, arranged by the virtuoso Giuliani, for himself and a student. The Katonas rearranged it somewhat to spread the difficulties of the transcription more evenly between them than the Master had; but then, when they played it, there seemed to have been no difficulties whatsoever, so effortless seemed their execution.

Their own arrangement of Rodrigo?s poetic ?Homage a Paul Dukas? followed, then more transcription in the form of excerpts from De Falla?s ?The Three Cornered Hat?, which was inspired by Alarcon ?s biting novel of the same name. The second movement, ?The Dance of the Neighbours?, with its almost rock-like rhythms got some of the younger audience moving ever so sedately in the pews.

A delighted audience member commented to me in the intermission, that after the opening number he could have left, completely satisfied with the perfection of the performance. It was not that he was bored, he explained to his wife; it was that , after such perfection, what more could there be?

I?m sure he was glad to hear the beautiful excerpts from de Falla?s ?El Amor Brujo?, especially the ?The Magic Circle? and the ?Ritual Fire Dance?, and most especially Tadesco?s ?Preludes and Fugues?, from ?The Well Tempered Guitars?, the particularly beautiful Prelude in E Flat, and the accompanying fugue, with its complicated subject.

The programme indicated Astor Piazzolla?s Otono Porteno as the final piece, a modern dance with unusual scratching effects on the strings,and rhythms played on the wooden body of the guitar. But the final piece of the evening ? the encore the audience demanded with their enthusiastic applause ?was Albeniz?s exquisite poem, ?Majorca?, from his master work ?Iberia?.

It was truly wonderful concert. RON LIGHTBOURNE