Critic Kenneth Keaton, writing in the November/December issue of American Record Guide (ARG), gave Reinventing Guitar II – Greek guitar virtuoso Smaro Gregoriadou’s second album for Delos – a strongly positive review. Having also written a glowing ARG review of her first Delos album, Reinventing Guitar (DE 3398) in 2009, Keaton claims that “This one is even better.” Right off the top, he effuses about her playing, describing it as “… superb. Her technique is flawless, no matter what demands she encounters. Her rhythm is fluid and rock-solid, and her ornaments (cross-string fingerings) burst like fireworks.”
Keaton goes on to explain some of the other factors that make this a unique and valuable release, namely Gregoriadou’s affiliation with Kertsopoulos Aesthetics: luthier Yorgos Kertsopoulos’s research center that concerns itself with historic guitar replication and performance practice. He goes into the various different kinds of instruments and alternative tuning schemes that Gregoriadou used, while expressing his appreciation of the “excellent notes” as well as the CD’s “very helpful” separate track that offers one-stop comparisons of each instrument’s characteristic sounds as well as demonstrating how some of the album’s music sounds on a standard modern guitar.
He adds that “Her choice of high Baroque repertory (Bach, Handel and Scarlatti transcriptions) is perfect for such explorations …” Among a few small nits that Keaton picks is that he takes exception to Smaro’s characterization (in the notes) of gut strings as sounding “brilliant.” But Keaton considers this release a clear winner in every respect, concluding that “Gregoriadou’s performance is very different, but still exciting, joyous, and alive. I had a great deal of enjoyment from this, and if you have a reasonably open mind, you will, too.”
And, to this, we at Delos can only add a loud and lusty “AMEN!”
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