Napoleon Coste: Guitar Works - Volume 5

Marc Teicholz (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 16, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos
• ASIN: B000050X9Y
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,633 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular disc., March 19, 2001

By 

Stephen Taylor (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Napoleon Coste: Guitar Works - Volume 5 (Audio CD)

Napoléon Coste was the greatest French guitar virtuoso and composer of the nineteenth century. Influenced by Fernando Sor's revival of this instrument, Coste was something like the guitar's Chopin. In fact, we hear traces of Chopin's music throughout Coste's work, especially in his many brilliant "Etudes" and the sparkling waltzes of his Opus 41, "Les Feuilles d'automne" (Leaves of Autumn), included on this disc.

While Coste was an oft-seen figure in the salons of Paris through his forties, a fall damaged his left hand in mid-career, leaving him unable to perform the virtuosic pieces that had made him famous. Coste did not stop composing though, and luckily his forced retirement seems not to have made him or his music at all melancholy. The pieces recorded by Marc Teicholz on this spectacular Naxos release date from Coste's later years. "La Ronde de Mai" is a lively, Chopin-like rondo, whose title incorrectly calls to mind a French country dance. Coste's Opus 44, "Souvenir du Jura," is a cheerful "memory" of his childhood in the mountains of east-central France. Finally, the rambling, virtuosic final piece, "Divagation," reminds one of a young man's wanderings in the French countryside and a composer still enchanted with it after so many years in Paris. -- An unforgettable disc.