Search - Leopoldo de Urcullu, Eugenio Tobalina :: Urcullu: Guitar Music - La Amistad / Opera Variations / La Queja

What a Shame...

Sor_Fingers | Boulder, CO USA | 02/18/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It's always really exciting when some unknown composer in the guitar world becomes known. When the repertoire is so limited, a new body of music is always welcomed. In the 80s and 90s, when David Leisner was bringing the music of JK Mertz into the guitar world, everyone went Mertz crazy. I'm not sure that Urcullu will have quite the same explosion of interest as Mertz did. I don't say this because Urcullu's music isn't good. The music on this album is actually quite exciting. The only problem is that the listener has to imagine a great player playing this music. Eugenio Tobalina simply does not deliver here. His playing is stiff, emotionless, saturated with particularly unattractive string noise and void of any sense of phrasing. The main reason I don't see an explosion of interest in Urcullu anytime soon is that Tobalina makes this music sound like average 19th Century garbage. But if you listen closely, you can hear how intriguing this music is, and hope that somewhere down the road, a great guitarist will make a great recording of Urcullu's music and then the spark will be lit."