Customer Reviews

Lauro: Venezuelan Waltzes for Guitar

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a guitarist and listen to guitar sounds CD everyday. Especaily I listen to modern time guitar songs, A.York or R.Dyense etc, on the other hand, I listen to south and mid american songs. This Lauro's CD have my both wish, the unique sentimental and beautiful sounds of modern and south american.

Their songs is not long scale songs, though they are small songs, include many unique melodies with alpegio picking style.

It is very difficult to select his best songs because there are a lot of wondeful songs. I love Nataria and Angostuna especially. I think that he is genious in the point that make the songs with minor chords. In addition to that, his songs do not exist bad songs, all the songs is more that good.

Thank you for reading my poor English.

A very nice collection of pieces from an important guitar composer. There are other fine performances of Antonio Lauro's works by John Williams and David Burgess, for instance, but this CD certainly does honor to Lauro's musical contributions.

This is currently my favorite guitar recording. The sound is powerful and the playing is unbelievable. I immediately bought every Adam Holtzman CD I could find and they are wonderful too.

This is, indeed, Venezuelan music, masterfully executed by a master guitarist. Flawlessly executed it stands as a tribute to one of Venezuela's outstanding composers. ¡Cinco estrellas!

I've seen and heard John Williams, David Russell and Victor Villadangos play many of these pieces and I've seen and heard archival footage of Antonio Lauro himself, as mentioned in the title, and in such rarified company Adam Holzman acquits himself well. Much like the composer, Holzman sounds like he's enjoying himself and that comes across in a performance that is technically flawless. Holzman plays this music "straight"; he takes no liberties with tempo or intonation, again, much like the composer. I've heard other recordings and have heard live performances of these pieces, rubato is one thing, but Maestro Lauro put those tempo markings and instructions on the scores as more than mere suggestions; I think he knew what he meant to write and wrote it. Performers and critics would do well to remember that.

All in all this is a very good CD; it's a wonderful introduction to a composer who is still much too narrowly known; the works are cleanly and clearly performed, and Norbert Kraft's sound engineering is up to it's usual excelent standard.

Victor Villadangos vol. 2 is also excellent, my question to Naxos now are two; When can we expect volume 3? And how about Maestro Lauro's other music, i.e., the guitar concerto, the music for harp, the music for piano?

This is great stuff!

Antonio Lauro pieces are very melodic, not long, repetitive but beautiful, his music speaks directly to me and nobody really introduced me to it, i am familiar with many tunes through midi songs and some recordings. i will buy this cd because he comes up time and again as influential instrumentalist to me with interesting structures

i am going to pay cd and nylon string guitar soon too i feel.

Despues de comprar este CD me di cuenta de la gran compra que realize. El sonido es realmente espectacular y el interprete fantastico. No puedo olvidar al compositor que muestra su maestria una vez mas. Excelente!

Unfortunatelly in my opinion this is one of the worst Naxos guitar series CDs. Compared to Victor Villadangos Vol. 2 of Lauro's guitar music (which is superb in any way), this performance suffers from many issues, the main of which is lack of understanding of this music. I do not question tecnical abilities here (even though in some places technical problems show up like unnecessary slowing down the tempo, or auckward pauses sprinkled everywhere). Most of the waltzes don't even feel like waltzes - imagine someone actually dancing on this performance. Feels like recorded in a hury, without giving the necessary level of attention. The sound is very thin and lacks confidence.

Un gran disco en el cual la magia de la musica compuesta por Antonio Lauro se muestra en todo su esplendor

Adam Holzman's performance on this disc has made Antonio Lauro's corpse turn over in its grave!!! Technically he has a command over the material but there is not artistry or profundity in his expression. Where are some contrasts in dynamics? Tone production? Change of timbre? Not all of these pieces are meant to be played at a robotronic-fast tempo. Yuckkkk.... If you want to hear him really kill a composer's complete oevre for guitar then check out the disasters he recorded for Naxos doing all of Ponce's guitar music. This guy is pulling a real 'Goerge W. Bush' type of con-job. Arrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhheeeeeessss AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Y para los latinoamericanos que dicen que esto disco esta buen hecho... pues se encuentran en un mundo raro para creer que esto hombre toca tan bueno!!!!! Hazme el favor!!!!!!!!!!