Miloš: new champion of the classical guitar
Martin Cullingford
Monday, May 14, 2012
The guitar holds an intriguing place within classical music. For many, it’s an instrument capable of great tonal beauty and high drama, with a repertoire steeped in both soulful pathos and graceful elegance. But it’s the very repertoire that, while a guitarist’s greatest gift, has also led to the instrument being marginalised by the mainstream. In many cases, certainly until recently, great guitar composers didn’t tend to write for other instruments – and the great composers of the rest of the repertoire didn’t tend to write for guitar. It took Andrés Segovia to change this, almost single-handedly creating the role of solo virtuoso guitarist in the recording age. Guitarists of subsequent generations – Julian Bream, John Williams and David Russell, to name just three – built upon this. And then recently something extraordinary happened: a classical guitarist’s debut recording remained at the top of the Specialist Classical Chart for much of the past year. That artist is Miloš Karadaglić – or Miloš as he’s known simply – who was named Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year at our 2011 Awards. I met him to talk about how he sees the guitar within the wider musical world. So rarely does a guitarist make the cover of Gramophone that we’ve also taken the opportunity to explore the topic more widely, looking at how the repertoire grew – and continues to grow – under its leading advocates. We also talk to a leading practitioner of period performance, William Carter.
Being dismissive of barriers within music is not unique to Miloš. Staff writer Charlotte Smith talks to star soloists who have made the bold decision to set down their instruments (temporarily) and pick up the conductor’s baton. Vladimir Ashkenazy, Han-Na Chang, Nikolaj Znaider and Paul Watkins, among others, tell us what one discipline adds to the other.
And finally, don’t forget to log on to gramophone.co.uk to explore the wealth of archive articles we’ve gathered to celebrate the artists in our Hall of Fame, launched in the last issue – and thank you, too, for all the comments we’ve had about those who made, and didn’t make, the final list.
