Imaginatively Produced Mesut Özgen plays contemporary guitar music - enjoyed by PATRIC STANDFORD '... an impressive performer who selects a distinctive repertoire ...'

The possibility that an eighty-four-minute guitar recital might not hold a viewer's interest on DVD is, in this case, adequately offset -- not only by some imaginative accompanying visuals, but also by the colleagues whose participation adds fascinating (if not always musical) interest to the programme. A short setting of an extract from Garcia Lorca's Poema de la siguiriya gitana by Robert Strizich, composer and himself a distinguished exponent of the guitar and baroque lute, is a challenging angular vocal exercise in which the soloist (soprano Lauren Rasmussen) also plays a tuned wine glass.

The visuals surrounding Özgen's performance of an attractive and neatly constructed Gigue from a Suite for Guitar by Anthony Newman, another baroque instrumental specialist (harpsichord) as well as prolific composer, are less interesting but never intrusive -- the music being far more fascinating...

TURKEY

CALIFORNIA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GUITAR