| Review by JW October 14, 2007 (10 of 10 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S): |
Julian Bream (UK, 1933) is widely recognized as one of the top classical guitarists of our time. Personally I was not very familiar with his work and I did a little research on his playing style. It transpires that two of his major influencers were Django Reinhardt and Andres Segovia. Plus he was a virtuoso on the Lute.
You can hear a lot of different instrumental influences in his sound. At times I found it very percussive and crisp on these pieces for Spanish guitar. I also heard harpsichord tones (for example track 3). He uses steel strings here which I do not always prefer just because of the somewhat thin sounding harpsichord-like tones they can produce. On the other hand, the steel strings add their own somewhat eery and ethereal character to the music (listen to the piece from Villa-Lobos - track 6) and listening to this is pretty amazing.
You can be forgiven to think that at times there are two or three guitarists at work. You need to listen to this disc a few times. And than single out a few of the tracks. Listening to the entire disc is almost too much of a good thing. There is so much going on that you won't see the wood for the trees.
For guitar enthusiasts this is a disc to own. Soundwise it's like Julian Bream plays for you, though it appears that he is sitting a few yards away. This album was recorded during November-December, 1962. There is some tape hiss. But the overall tone is clear and full of body and subtle detail.
Jw
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