Fierens, Carlo
Napoleon Coste: Complete Guitar Works Vol. 5: Souvenirs
This Da Vinci Classics album is the fifth volume of the complete recording of Napoleon Costes guitar works, interpreted by Carlo Fierens performing on a guitar by Rene Lacote (1855). His music displays a wide spectrum of characteristics of the Romantic style. The theme and variation genre aside, Coste chooses to continue the composition with new musical ideas, or varied repetitions of them, which gives his works an episodic or rhapsodic trait. Over time, his works show more and more characteristics typical of Romanticism; indeed, there is an alternating tide of periods displaying more or less intense Romantic features. The works with a lighter Romantic imprint are normally those clearly intended for either commercial or didactic purposes. The works included in this volume, titled "Souvenirs", span a timeframe of more than forty years, and yet they underline Costes consistency in style and writing. This selection of small, simple pieces from three different collections (op. 5, op. 7, and op. 51) is a good example of the composers dealing with short form. It is also a display of intertextuality as one late piece is entirely modeled on youthful works published forty years earlier.