Boccherini: Quintets For Guitar And Strings

can't get enough

I've been a Pepe Romero fan for a while, and this CD is one of his best, and the St Martin strings are superb. Extremely well balanced approach to this music.

The reason that it's a five-star is this: I work in the surgery department of a large hospital; we have a front stockroom to our department, and a back stockroom. There is a CD player at each end, which I control since I set up the cases for the surgeons and am constantly in and out of the stockrooms. I put on one CD from this set in the front, the other in the back, and I never get tired of them. I have a lot of CDs, but these get chosen at least one day a week, and I never get tired of them!

One of the secrets is Boccherini's neverending inventiveness; in this he has a lot of the jazz musician in him (before there was jazz!). In a lot of other classical music, you have to kind of wait for the "good parts"; in between the good parts, there is pleasant filler. (Think: William Tell Overture, Poet and Peasant Overture, Beethoven's Fifth, Also Sprach Zarathustra) With Boccherini, it's ALL "good parts". Every bar is creative, inventive, interesting. October 9, 2008

barefoot kicker

Boccherini's Quintets for Guitar and Strings do not highlight the guitar as solo instrument in the way that better-known Baroque concerti frame and focus upon their respective solo instruments. Rather, the instrument insinuates itself into a company of strings and plays along with them, sometimes providing a steady background and occasionally emerging as a conventional soloist.

Like a soccer player who becomes an NFL kicker, this unexpected entree of the guitar into an unfamiliar environment displays pleasing crossover skills and unanticipated potentialities.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble gives a truly splendid performance. Boccherini writes for a vivacious violin, and he certainly finds his desideratum among this ensemble. Indeed, the violin is arguably more prominent in this music than the guitar.

One does not finish a careful hearing of this performance astonished by Pepe Romero's technical virtuosity. Boccherini does not set this artist up for such an outcome. Rather, one concludes with admiration and gratitude for Romero's ability to sublimate certain soloist prerogatives and integrate himself fully into this string-ish company, where he plays with evident cameraderie.

The quality of the sounds produced by the Philips engineers is stunning, a word one strives not to use loosely.

¡Viva Romero and his tribe!

Field goals and extra points, after all, win football games. January 10, 2007

Vivid & stylish performances

Pepe Romero teams up with members from the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra. Though originally released in the late 1970's, this is still the best recording of the guitar quintets of Luigi Boccherini. The playing is first rate, and the balance between guitar and strings is just right. (In most such recordings the guitar is either inaudible or unnaturally bloated.) Personally I'm not fond of all Boccherini's guitar quintets--one critic grumped that they're more fun to play than to hear. But No. 4 with its famous "Fandango" and No. 9 "La Ritirata di Madrid" are delightful. October 25, 2006

Joyous

A joyous celebration. That's the best way I can describe his music. It transport me to the past where I can wander around with grand ladies and gentlemen of the court, or go sailing off into the mist.
December 6, 2005

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