There are plenty of recordings of Fernando Sor's "Introduction and Variations on a Theme of Mozart for guitar, Op. 9," combined with other works by this Spaniard who fled to England in the early nineteenth century. Sor was something of a celebrity in his time, not an aesthetic extremist like
Paganini but a flawless master of his instrument with a large collection of his own compositions at hand to demonstrate his technique. This recording by Montenegro's Goran Krivokapic, one of a group of players from the Balkans who have made convincing recordings of Spanish repertoire, can compete with any Sor disc on the market, with technically unimpeachable playing and a program that perhaps resembles one Sor himself might have chosen. The "12 Etudes, Op. 6," each concerned with a specific figure or technical problem, are not Sor's most spectacular pieces. But they lay down the aural groundwork, so to speak, for the rest of the program, the dramatic first movement of the two-movement "Fantaisie, Op. 7"; the "Mozartian Six Divertimento, Op. 8"; and finally the "Introduction and Variations on a Theme of Mozart," which broaden out into something of a fantasy themselves. The engineering from Naxos, which has not always done well with guitar music, is fine here, with a simple clarity that complements Krivokapic's straightforward style and none of the fetishization of performer noise so common in guitar recordings. Recommended for guitar enthusiasts or just as an introduction to Sor, for most of the pieces here are staples of guitar recitals.
