by Andrea Aguzzi, 27 February, 2018
This record has a series of subtitles, the first “Lyrical pieces for classical guitar” already defines the tones used in this CD in a simple and exhaustive way. All its thirteen songs are characterized by a lyrical, almost pastoral, melodic and almost nostalgic tone. It’s a record that I think it’s better to listen to on a stereo, on a sound system and this is because the recorded sound has remarkable acoustic qualities that widen the elegiac sense expressed by Park’s music: the dynamic is wide, the acoustic sounds have been elegantly accented with a reverb as accurate as measured, low frequencies dilated to emphasize the warm tones produced by the guitars used by US guitarist Richard Parks.
There are two more notes inside the cd box: “Fragments of the retrospective …” and “Echoes of a distant childhood”, which are perfectly related to the musical themes and the overall sound of the album. Richard Parks’s music speaks of perfect, ideals moments, fragments of memory, echoes of a distant, almost idealized youth, memories of summer afternoons, timeless moments set in memory, true elegiac moments. The risk may sometimes be that of over-sentimentality, but Richard Parks is such a talented guitarist with his instrument, how intelligent in knowing how to measure the themes and times of his music, avoiding any excess that could compromise the delicate musical balance, sentimental and emotional, achieved through the strings of his guitar. Really nice and moving.