1997 [DDD]

{CD}

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It is important for the guitar’s absorption into mainstream music-making, that the gap between lone recitalist and concerto soloist should be bridged; the two works by Crumb and Ruders, in which the guitar plays a concertante role, make a valuable contribution to that end.
   Crumb’s work is an eight-movement sextet in which he uses a remarkable variety of instruments to produce haunting sounds. His 'quest', prompted by quotations from Dante and Lorca, is "a long tortuous journey towards an ecstatic and transfigured feeling of arrival", in which interjected phrases from Amazing Grace have a moving effect akin to that of the Bach chorales in Berg’s "Violin Concerto" and Takemitsu’s "Folios".
   ...
   ... Only a guitarist of the highest technical skill and musical insight could play and empathize with these works: Starobin is a model of the ilk, teamed with other players of similar calibre. This is a remarkable and magnificently recorded disc, nothing less than a milestone in the progress of the twentieth-century guitar.

JD, Gramophone, June 1997