The record is distinguished by absolutely splendid guitar-playing (in the booklet's photograph Stein-Erik Olsen looks as if he actually enjoys playing, which is more than many very good string players seem to manage!). The record is also distinguished by offering a varied, and an interestingly varied, programme of solos originally written for the guitar.
First comes Vaclav Kucera, a Czech professor of composition paying his homage to Che Guevara, the dedicated revolutionary who did indeed exact homage, and often affection, from many of yesterday's young. The music, ordered into a diary of five crucial days, stresses the revolutionary rather than any more gentle aspect of his life yet the fierce sounds are, played on the guitar like this, exceedingly moving. More so, to my ears, than the rather duller Chitarra solo (opting out of a title: Chitarra is after all only the Italian for ''guitar'') by Ketil Hvoslef.
Far from dull, indeed borrowing very often from the beautiful (as well as from a first-hand knowledge of guitar technique) are John Duarte's Variations on a Catalan Folk-song. Duarte is no doubt an expert on the Catalan language (I am not knowing only that it always looks like ill-spelled Spanish), but I am sure that we share a respect for the friendly, honest people scattered from Barcelona through Andorra and Roussillon to the Balearics. Mercifully, you do not have to be an expert on Catalonia to enjoy this music, the track I would most readily replay for my own pleasure. Yet there will certainly be those who enjoy Jacques Casterede's own homage, which is to Pink Floyd, a group whose own music provides a peg for the composer's, or the forceful and colourful Elogio de la danza of the Cuban, Leo Brouwer.
Plenty of background information about the contributing composers, and their music, on this most agreeably varied record is given in JD's own accompanying notes in the record's booklet. These are sensibly written in six sizeable paragraphs: one of general introduction, then a separate one for each of the five composers and their relevant music. Given these five independent paragraphs in what order would you print them in the booklet relative to the recorded order of the pieces? Never mind: consider rather the very great virtues of other facets of this very well recorded Compact Disc.'