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THE most popular classical guitar piece by THE classical guitarist of our time, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is combined with the composer’s second most popular work, Fantasía para un Gentilhombre for guitar and orchestra, written for the legendary Andrés Segovia, and solo works by Rodrigo and De Falla to complete the celebration of Spanish guitar’s golden age.

THE most talented, charismatic and hottest guitarist of the day! In less than three years Milos has won Gramophone, Classic Brit and ECHO Klassik awards, garnered top chart positions around the world, more than a quarter of a million albums worldwide, making him the best-selling classical newcomer in the Universal Music Group.

Tracklisting

Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez* De Falla: Danza del Molinero De Falla: Homenaje Rodrigo: Invocation and Dance (homage a de Falla) Rodrigo: Fantasia para Un Gentilhombre*

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Longform

ARANJUEZ - A Journey across Spanish Landscapes The classical guitar we know today is a relatively recent development: the instrument took its modern form only at the end of the 19th century, after a centuries-long evolution, the penultimate manifestation of which was the smaller, six-string guitar popular in the 19th-century salon and much favoured by aristocratic ladies. With the new instrument came a new repertoire, one that established the guitar as a serious recital instrument. This album – Miloš Karadaglić’s first concerto recording – traces the modern guitar’s emergence in the strong light of Spain, the country where, more than any other, the guitar holds sway. Indeed, it is Spain’s national instrument.

The programme is bookended by perhaps the two most popular works ever written for guitar and orchestra: Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) and his Fantasía para un gentilhombre (1954). But the story of the guitar in the 20th century starts earlier than either of those much-loved works. The first major milestone is Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje, a guitar solo composed in 1920 to the memory of the French composer Claude Debussy, whom Falla revered and who had died two years earlier. This was the first work for guitar by a major composer, and as such the first signal of the instrument’s renaissance. Debussy had offered Falla much encouragement during his seven years in Paris, where he had gone to study in one of the most creative atmospheres of the early 20th century. A great master of musical atmosphere, Falla wrote: “I am interested in the relations between colours and sounds, and often melodic ideas and harmonic combinations have been suggested by a painting or an old stained-glass window.” The simple gravity of the Homenaje belies its richness: many years later Benjamin Britten, after a performance by Julian Bream, expressed amazement at how much music was in so short a space. Like many other composers at that time – notably Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Vaughan Williams and Grainger in Britain, Canteloube in France – Falla was given to incorporating folk music as part of the essentially classical language in which he wrote. His 1919 ballet El sombrero de tres picos (“The Three-cornered Hat”) abounds with glorious melodies and exudes a genuine sense of Spanishness, not least because it draws on traditional Andalusian melodies. From it comes the “Danza del molinero” (“Miller’s dance”), which takes the form of a farruca, a Flamenco form traditionally danced only by men. Not surprisingly, it makes the transition from orchestra to solo guitar with ease.

Like Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo travelled to Paris, where he studied at both the Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. Just before his return to Madrid in 1939, he wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez for the Spanish guitarist Regino Sáinz de la Maza. In it is distilled the composer’s response to the beautiful and atmospheric gardens of the royal palace at Aranjuez: the little town, some 50 kilometres south of Madrid, was where he had spent part of his honeymoon in the early 1930s. The impression is perhaps the more potent for the fact that Rodrigo had been blind from the age of three: the sounds and perfumes of this magical place find perfect expression in the music, whether sparkling in the outer movements, or poised and reflective in the central Adagio (whose haunting melody, first heard in the concerto on the cor anglais, has been appropriated ever since by numerous players and singers from every walk of musical life). For many years it was thought that the movement was a response to the bombing of Guernica in 1937; but Rodrigo’s widow later explained that it memorialised the couple’s first, still-born child.

Curiously, the great Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia never performed the Concierto de Aranjuez; instead, he commissioned his own work for guitar and orchestra from Rodrigo. The result was the Fantasía para un gentilhombre (“Fantasia for a gentleman”), which Segovia premiered in San Francisco in 1958. Unlike the concerto, the Fantasía draws on existing melodies for its four movements: dances by the 17th-century Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz. The mood is courtly and perfectly gauged to Segovia’s aristocratic style, and while the work has never achieved the popularity of the Concierto de Aranjuez, it certainly runs it a close second. Miloš Karadaglić has only recently added it to his repertoire, but he already has a great affection for the piece, which, he notes, has “the most wonderful spirit, and in terms of sound and texture feels even more idiomatic under the fingers than does Aranjuez”. Rodrigo and Falla come together in perhaps the most complex work on this album, Rodrigo’s Invocación y danza (“Invocation and dance”), which is itself a homage to Falla, as the subtitle indicates. It won Rodrigo first prize at the 1961 Coupe Internationale de Guitare, a competition organised by French radio (France once again playing a major role in Spanish music). For Miloš, it’s a work that brings together so many elements that combine in his imagination: Segovia’s depth of sound, John Williams’s faultless precision and Julian Bream’s inimitable colour. It also seems to offer a conclusion to a musical journey that was started by Falla, continued by Rodrigo and now sees the two men looking back as one, no doubt satisfied with their part in establishing the guitar as a major player in 20th-century classical music.

James Jolly

Marketing

Key Selling Points

The MOST popular classical guitar piece THE most talented, charismatic and hottest guitarist of the day!

Marketing Notes

ARANJUEZ will be advertised as a February SBS product:

15" TV spot x 4 week campaign
Weather Watch - full CD played on rotation
Video Clip - used a interstitial material plus OnDemand
Radio mentions / giveaways in language stations
SBS Homepage bean
Online (ad banners)

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