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The Miami Herald
January 11, 2004
by
Octavio Roca
Pieces de violes: Music of Marin Marais, Sainte Colombe, Antoine Forqueray and Francois Couperin. Naxos-naïve, $45, five CDs.
[...]Smith is a master, and there is probably no one alive who can surpass the sheer splendor of what this man can do with the most often neglected of string instruments. His lute articulation is exquisite, his rhythmic control is as impressive as it is natural. Smith is also an intense, decidedly personal interpreter capable of bringing out the mystical depths of Marais and la Colombe as well as the fiendishly intricate details of this sometimes dangerously precious music. Here is the complexity of Bach peppered with more than a dose of Latin sweetness. [...]
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