Composer: Joaquín Rodrigo
Performer: EntreQuatre Guitar Quartet, Ricardo Gallen
Orchestra: Asturias Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Maximiano Valdés
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Naxos
Catalogue: 8555841
Release: 2002
Size: 241 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Concierto de Aranjuez
01. I. Allegro con spirito
02. II. Adagio
03. III. Allegro gentile
Fantasia para un Gentilhombre
04. Villano y Ricercare
05. Españoleta y fanfare de la caballería de Nápoles
06. Danza de las Hachas
07. Fantasia para un gentilhombre: IV. Canario
Concierto Andaluz
08. Tempo di bolero
09. Adagio – Allegro – Allegretto – Tempo I
10. Allegretto
The focus of these three volumes is on concertos, the most popular and arguably the best segment of Rodrigo’s orchestral music. The best known are those for guitar and orchestra, of the very numerous recordings of which these are ‘good enough to keep’. Lest anyone might think that the Concierto para piano y orquesta listed on Volume 4 is a previously overlooked work, it’s in fact the Concierto heroico in modestly repackaged form. Achúcarro revised it with the composer’s consent to make the work ‘slightly more dynamic’. This is now the definitive form and performance of the concerto. The ‘symphonic essay’ Juglares (1923) was Rodrigo’s first orchestral work, brief but characteristic of the music of Valencia, where he lived before going to Paris to study. It has no other current recording. All the remaining works on these three discs have alternative recordings but though one may prefer the warmer-sounding version of the Concierto de estío by Agustín León Ara, the composer’s son-inlaw, on the EMI set, these recordings are in every respect comparable with the ‘opposition’.