'I want to wake the instrument from hibernation,’ a passionate Miloš Karadaglić tells Adam Sweeting
Listening to the debut album by guitarist Miloš Karadaglić, you find yourself wondering where on earth the classical guitar has been lately. As he moves from haunting compositions by Tarrega, Albeniz and Granados to the more abstract shapes of Carlo Domeniconi’s Koyunbaba suite, it’s as if Karadaglic is shining a brilliant light on the entire heritage of his instrument .
“The Seventies was the golden time of the guitar, but the situation was different because there was so much support from the media, the BBC and everybody,” says Milos (he’s known by just his first name).
“Because of Julian Bream and John Williams, the classical guitar really was a household name, but then the world changed, and the kind of music people wanted to listen to changed. I want to wake the guitar up from this hibernation, and show what I can do and what my instrument can do.”
“Can do” are two words that sit comfortably with Milos. Born 28 years ago in the tiny Balkan country of Montenegro, he felt driven from an early age to be an artist and performer. Since Montenegro has a population of only 600,000 and no discernable classical guitar tradition, making a career on the instrument was what might be called “a big ask”.
It all began when Milos discovered an ancient and dusty guitar with broken strings on top of a cupboard in his parents’ bedroom. Inexplicably, this sorry wreck of an instrument convinced him that he must become a guitarist. Since, as he puts it, “it was still kind of communist then” and there were no private music teachers, he enrolled in the state music school.
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