Soundboard last issue review

In Luigi Attademo’s Paganini [:] Complete Guitar Music Brilliant Classics has again favored us with a most useful disc for reference given that few listeners will sit and listen to the entirety of its three generously filled discs. It is billed as the complete (solo) guitar music of Paganini, a claim I will accept willingly. There are 146 cuts in the set, and with the exception of the three movements of the Grande Sonata, they are mostly very brief, ranging in length from nineteen seconds to the attention span-challenging 5:17 of the Sinfonia della Lodovisca. There is also a rather impressive Sonatina in C of almost five minutes. Most hover around one minute. They would certainly enlarge the pedagogical repertory of any teacher who sought them out. Attademo plays everything well. But it is only the Grande Sonata which requires any special technical and interpretative prowess. Here Attademo delivers one of the best performances I have heard, aided by the sound of a Gaetano Guadagnini guitar of 1851 and the reliably miraculous recording skills of John Taylor. Worth having, but probably not suitable for “binge listening.”