Bream's Mendelssohn transcriptions are done with such skill that the Gondola song is more evocative of light, color, and shimmering water than on the keyboard....

Bream's Mendelssohn transcriptions are done with such skill that the Gondola song is more evocative of light, color, and shimmering water than on the keyboard.

Bream's praises have justly been sung many times, and there is not a great deal to add now, beyond saying that this beautifully recorded LP is certain to please the guitarist's very numerous admirers as much as his previous ones.

Paganini's praises have been far less consistently celebrated; in fact it was for a long time considered apt to dismiss his compositions — without a hearing — as mere 'virtuoso music'. One might have thought guitarists in particular, with a repertoire that too much consists of empty trifles like the Tarrega items included here, could scarcely afford to neglect substantial pieces like Paganini's sonatas, especially as he wrote so well for the instrument. Although the A major lasts for over twenty minutes, its three movements have no undue structural pretensions, and there is real lyricism in the central Romanze, genuine charm to its final variations. Interest is constant, in fact, providing the music be played superlatively well, as Paganini always must be. Here, needless to say, it is.

The Mendelssohn works are, of course, Bream's own transcriptions, done with enormous skill so that one has to admit to the string quartet piece coming off better than might have been considered possible. He does well, too, with the lush thirds and sixths of the Gondola song, which in fact is here more evocative of light, colour, and shimmering water than on the keyboard.

-- Gramophone [1/1971]
reviewing the original LP release that included the Paganini, Mendelssohn and Tarrega works