The guitar is an instrument that records beautifully, as Carlos Bonell's recent EMI recital of twentieth-century music demonstrated, and this new issue of more music from the same period is also satisfying as sound, although there is an acceptable degree of background. The one work in common between the two CDs is Britten's haunting, darkly-coloured Nocturnal: Bonell plays it with sensitivity, fine pacing and a keen sense of drama. Though the performance by Stein-Erik Olsen has less sheer urgency and intensity, it is still a very good one that brings out the varied tonal beauties and subtle textures of this important work created for Julian Bream and reflecting the skills of that major artist. However, in comparison with Bonell's choice of Falla, Ginastera and Walton, the other music on this Simax disc is rather less striking. John Duarte's Nuages passants is a set of seven variations based on Django Reinhardt's famous tune Nuages, and is idiomatically written for the guitar, but the fluent and agreeable music does not make a really strong impression, and the same may be said of the Norwegian composer Johan Kvandal's Sonata. Antonio Bibalo comes from Trieste but now lives in Norway: his Study in blue is declamatory and quite powerful without, again, saying anything especially memorable given its length of nine minutes. But the playing here is compelling.
The notes for this issue, like that of the Bonell have been informatively written by John Duarte, who manages to say something slightly different about the Britten work common to both. He also points out, rightly, that the guitar no longer belongs exclusively to Spain and its idioms, as this record demonstrates, though inevitably there are Iberian echoes in the music. Good recording.'