Here are five student pieces of around the grade 4-5 standard. Without exception they are all well written and enjoyable compositions.
The opening Theme Vari6 has three variations and a finale and manages to make a quite decent composition out of a small amount of working material.
Pluie, even without the give-away title, would make the player think of rain falling. Echo could easily be used as a study in dynamics (as all the pieces in this book could). Danse is the most dramatic of the five pieces with an ostinato bass rumbling away under some macabre sounds above it. The set closes with a gentle Berceuse.
Within the confines of writing at this level, Cortes has produced a lovely set of teaching/student concert pieces of imagination.
(Steve Marsh, Classical Guitar, 12/2000)
