Goran Krivokapić,
born in 1979 in Belgrade, has won no
less than seventeen first prizes in
international guitar competitions. Of
course winning competitions does not
automatically guarantee a great career
but on the other hand seventeen different
juries can’t be completely wrong when
it comes to judging both technical proficiency
and artistic insights. The direct reason
for this recording in Naxos’s admirable
Laureate series was his victory in the
2004 Guitar Foundation of America Competition.
My expectations were high when I pressed
the "play"- button; I was
not disappointed. Rarely have I heard
such remarkable fluency and lightness.
Rarely have I heard a guitar “sing”
with such sonority. Initially I thought
it was a pity that he didn’t choose
more original music – only the last
piece, by his compatriot Bogdanović,
was written explicitly for the guitar
– but all the transcriptions
are expertly done and sound wholly idiomatic.
The Werthmüller sonata seems to
have been written for a keyboard instrument
and recalls the Vienna classicists with
its elegantly flowing first movement
and the concluding Rondo vivace
with some bold harmonic turns. The central
Lento seems to belong to another
time, darker and more melancholy. A
charming acquaintance, charmingly played.
Arrangements of Bach’s music are innumerable
and Bach himself was an inveterate transcriber
of his own music as well as that of
others. Krivokapić plays his own
transcription and, knowing his own capacity
better than anyone else, it is tailor-made
and fits like a glove. There is such
ease about his playing and even the
tricky “London Bridge” fugue feels as
easy as could be.
Many of Scarlatti’s 555 harpsichord
sonatas are certainly influenced by
the guitar and they have long been favourites
with guitarists in sundry transcriptions.
What always impresses about these sonatas,
whether they are played on the harpsichord
or the guitar, is the inexhaustible
richness of invention. The Andante
et cantabile K. 208 is indeed a
remarkable piece of music, wandering
through the harmonies in an almost impressionist
manner.
And so, finally, the only "original"
music: Dušan
Bogdanović’s Sonata No.
2. His name was new to me but by
a strange coincidence I received in
the same bunch of review discs another
composition by him, for two guitars,
to be reviewed shortly. The Sonata,
written in 1985, is in four short movements,
filled with rhythmic intricacies and,
as Colin Cooper writes in his perceptive
notes, it is the rhythmic elements that
form the structural backbone of the
whole composition, also in the two middle
movements, of which the Scherzo malinconico
seems to be a contradiction in terms,
but that’s what it is, a very original
"melancholy joke". There is
a feeling of the Balkans through the
whole composition and nowhere more so
than in the final Allegro ritmico,
which is a fireworks of technical challenges,
executed by Goran
Krivokapić with almost casual ease
and elegance. This is a fitting conclusion
to an unusually enjoyable guitar recital
and I am already looking forward to
hearing more of Dušan Bogdanović’s
compositions and Goran Krivokapić’s
playing.
By now it almost an axiom that when
Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver are
in charge of a recording the sound can‘t
be bettered and this disc is no exception.
There are a few squeaks from the fretboard
but that is practically unavoidable.
Göran Forsling
Goran Krivokapić
(guitar) 
