Smaro Gregoriadou: Reinventing Guitar on “Kertsopoulos Æsthetics”
..."What I found remarkable about the new instruments is the way they allow for a much more detailed separation of the treble and bass voices, of the different musical lines within each piece. One guitar almost sounds like two separate instruments! "... CLASSICAL MUSIC SENTINEL of Canada, July 2010“Kertsopoulos Æsthetics” consist of a 30-year continuous research in guitar’s retrospective history and tradition accomplished by George Kertsopoulos, Greek guitarist and instrument-maker with international acclaim, which has ended in numerous achievements on the fields of guitar’s and strings’ construction and technology. It is a series of innovations and intelligent solutions aiming:
a) to connect contemporary guitarist with obsolete forms and sounds of guitar, that nevertheless determined the instrument’s rich evolution from early centuries until today, since the so-called “guitar” instrument has during its long history undergone enormous changes in form, construction, tunings, number and materials of strings, dimensions etc, and
b) to expand modern guitar’s technical limits and offer potential solutions to its undesirable complexities (small volume, imbalance in the transmission from 3rd to 4th string, dullness of trebles, pure tone-color etc).Kertsopoulos’ innovations include:
1. New materials and types of strings that, when applied on an ordinary guitar, offer such interesting possibilities as:
- double/triple-course and re-entrant stringing,
- wide range of tunings from down a third lower to up an octave higher than the usual one in e’,
- multi-timbre exploration and tone-color diversity,
- bigger volume and sound projection,
- access to unexplored tonalities up to now totally out of use for modern guitar.
2. Complex applications of evolved specifications (right-hand and movable-back pedal mechanisms, scalloped fingerboards, soundboards of diverse various etc) with indisputable reinforcement of guitar’s sound.“Kertsopoulos Æsthetics” have achieved:
1. Creation of guitar family and complete guitar ensembles with unlimited potential in frequency range and tone-color,
2. Credible, historically coherent, convincing interpretations of renaissance and baroque guitar repertory (music for solo guitar or ensemble music with guitar), as well as reliable guitar transcriptions of works originally written for instruments like lute, harpsichord, mandolin, violin etc,
3. New sound horizons for contemporary composers to explore giving a guitar sound that meets at last today’s concert hall demanding standards,4. Creation of personal styles and aesthetic preferences that encourage diversity.
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