The Usher Waltz of Koshkin is the only item not previously recorded by Williams; this disc is not, however, a compilation but a concert programme. The 'Usher' of Koshkin's Waltz is he of whose House Poe described the Fall, and if Williams does not quite match the relentless thrust of the composer's own performance he is more successful in portraying the decline from gracious gaiety to frenzy and the final pathos. The composer may not quite have succeeded in his objective of providing the guitar with a work to set alongside Liszt's Mephisto Waltz for the piano, yet he has added a wholly idiomatic work of unusual intensity to its repertory.
For the rest no more need be said than that the absence or presence of an audience makes little apparent difference to Williams's performances; even in live concert he is rarely troubled by those slips that necessitate further takes in a recording studio. Technical perfection and musical refinement are things that may be taken for granted. I wonder, however, why he omits the appoggiatura on the last beat of bar 3 of the Scarlatti Sonata, and I find it strange that, in his notes, he should unreservedly refer to BWV1006a as a ''Lute Suite''!'