Reviews – Comments

‘…Great, Kostas! I enjoyed every single note of your playing.
Great spirit, phrasing… BRAVO!’
Oscar Ghiglia, soloist, professor  
 


“…As a composer, Grigoreas is characterized by perfect balance and a combination of vision and ingenuity […] As a soloist, he held us spellbound with the nobility of sound, the plasticity of phrasing and rhythm, and a wealth of fine shades of expression…”

“…A composer possessing not only a sense of the functionality of contrasts and of the timing in their alternation but also a vision so rich that it requires expressive means of a wider range…”
George Leotsakos, Express


“…A brilliant performance…the high accomplishment of this gifted guitarist…”
Classical Guitar magazine


“…Inspired, imaginative works, images with colour, with light. Refined, ingenious, poetic sounds…”
“…Kostas Grigoreas’ recordings are a model of quality, sensibility and consummate skill…”
Evangelos Assimakopoulos, soloist, TaR Magazine


“…There are few individuals around the world who I respect for their artistic integrity and unique creative spirit. Kostas Grigoreas is undoubtedly one of them…’
Antigoni Goni, guitar soloist


“…At the core of his recital lay Bach (Second Lute Suite), which he rendered in consummate pre-classical style, beautiful sound and enviable technical skill […] Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, opus 70, was admirable in its ‘staging’…”
Phoebus Anoyanakis, Avgi


“Kostas Grigoreas is one of the most gifted Greek guitarists of our time: modern in his conception of the guitar and deeply cultivated musically […] I strongly recommend that you listen to him carefully. Along with my music, you will enjoy an exquisite guitar sound.”
Manos Hadjidakis, composer


“…Both as a guitarist and a composer, Kostas Grigoreas is one of the most serious figures in the field of classical guitar…”
Hubert Kappel, soloist, professor


“…Kostas Grigoreas, a top classical guitarist with a rich career, and a collaborator of important Greek composers, is one of those ‘fortunate’ musicians who are not ‘hindered’ by problems of technique in the full execution of the finest shades of expression and can interpret a work exactly as they feel it…”
“…But the weightiest evidence (as well as a sound argument) for the ‘Greekness’ of Grigoreas’ works is the fact that he is a Greek musician who wishes to avoid stereotypical formulas and express himself  honestly, like a true creative artist […] 
Indeed, for example’s sake, one might paraphrase the title of Grigoreas’ album (Guitar in the Greek Mode) to ‘Guitar in an Exceptional Mode’…”
George E. Papadakis, Eleftherotypia


“…His experience as a top guitarist leads things further to the adventure of total communication. To “his” music, the composer can express the soul of the guitarist himself. He finds ways to penetrate the emotion and trigger the body of the listener…”
Effie Agrafioti, soloist, TaR magazine


“…Excellent technique and sound….”
Guitar Magazine, London


“…In my view, a composer should paint the ‘portrait of an era’ through the act of  composition. There lies his skill. To compose seasons and memories that have been registered  in the subconscious, colours and particular styles recorded through the passing of time. To be capable of enclosing in his music not only his own private experience of the present time but also the collective experience of the past. It is these very elements that I see in the compositions of Kostas Grigoreas, and for this reason his music transports me to another world through guitar idioms formed out of knowledge and sensibility…”
Notis Mavroudis, soloist, composer, Athens 984


“…Grigoreas’ music has a distinctive voice of its own…”
Carlos Bonell, guitar soloist, arranger


“…Kostas Grigoreas is an eminent guitar soloist. As a creator of works for the instrument he  has served for years, he has developed a personal and direct idiom, which brings out both  the virtuosic and the timbral qualities of this instrument…”
Pericles Koukos, composer, artistic director of the National Conservatory – Greece


“…Kostas Grigoreas possesses gifts that I greatly admire in a guitarist: power, economy, clarity, precision and a profound sense of rhythm, pouring forth with the spontaneity of natural charisma…”
“…His compositions are exceptionally modern, yet soundly founded upon the great, the ‘classical’ norms of guitar music that has been written over the centuries…”

Georgia Laimou, e-go.gr


 “…The ‘fascinating sound of a guitar’ according to maestro Manos Hadjidakis…”
Vassilis Angelikopoulos, Kathimerini


“…with his musical instinct and sensibility, the guitar plays a leading role of narrator…”
Maria Markouli, Ta Nea


“…The performance of the soloist Kostas Grigoreas renders the character of the compositions with clarity and precision, suggesting a multi-level conception, which coincides with that of the composer, thus revealing his complex artistic perceptiveness and experience as a performer…”
George V. Monemvasitis, TaR magazine


“…Dissociating himself, as a composer of a multifaceted background, from locality, he functions as an elaborate sculptor of sensations that have been liberated from both passing fashions and tradition-related obsessions…”
“…Grigoreas’ classical guitar as protagonist and… a triumph of the art of profound expressiveness in music performance…”
Argyris Zelos, Athenorama


“…The technique and sound of the soloist are once again beyond question, in a record that is one of the most significant creative contributions to its genre…”
Alexis Vakis, Diphono 


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