Search - Nikita Koshkin;Frank Koonce;Judicael Perroy :: The Well-Tempered Koshkin

Frothy but still solid music

Jeremiah Lawson | Seattle, WA United States | 06/14/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Those of you who have heard The Prince's Toys may be disappointed or pleased that most of these works are frothy and tongue-in-cheek. I loved everything on Koshkin's first album because the Stravinsky and Shostakovich influences are so up-front. On this CD Koshkin plays with a lighter, happier mood and with more popular and folk idioms.The Elves Suite has enough sardonic dissonance in it to resemble the more famous Usher Waltz, and Koshkin's jazzier pieces like Parade and 3 Stations on One Road have plenty of verve. The Ballads came off as too twee for me at first but I've found even this work has grown on me. I prefer Koshkin's fast and lively performance over Elena Papendreou's still good but not as gripping performance. You can sense listening to this album that Koshkin once wanted to play guitar in a rock band. Overall the performances for all the pieces are great. Like the first CD Koonce and Koshkin worked on together these are works other classical guitarists ahven't recorded (excepting Elena Papandreou's recent disk, which I haven't been able to hear yet). So if you have any interest in Koshkin's music at all you should get this. Even though I prefer Koshkin's darker stuff there's still a lot of worthy music here."