Richard Harvey’s Concerto Antico, “a suite of tunes based on old dance and song forms”, follows in the footsteps of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre only in spirit; Rodrigo’s tunes are those of Gaspar Sanz whilst Harvey’s are his own, he has more than one country in mind, and he treats the nominal forms freely, capturing their spirit as he perceives it. Whereas Rodrigo’s aim was to reconcile elements of romanticism with given earlier material, Harvey, with the advantage of being the creator of both ‘old’ and ‘new’, succeeds in producing a more naturally integrated work. His use of the orchestra is, too, more strikingly varied. This is not to minimize the effectiveness of Rodrigo’s Fantasia, conceived with tighter parameters; they are very different works. Harvey says in his notes, that he aimed to stretch Williams’s technique by writing the “impossible”, and he certainly poses problems in “Lavolta”. There are currently 20-30 recordings of Rodrigo’s work in the catalogue and, given that quite a few other guitarists have the requisite technique (if not Williams’s polished mastery), there is no good reason why the same should not be the case with Harvey’s Concerto Antico, a work of great charm and high quality.
Steve Gray’s Concerto is a grand spectacular in which there is little trace of his distinguished career in jazz. He describes it as “a distillation of big-band thinking” but the ‘big band’ of the flanking movements is a large orchestra, with which the soloist competes for attention, a thing made possible only through the intervention of electronics. There is much animation in the opening “Dances”, the following “Love songs” have a popular-musical air over them, but the concluding “Jokes” wear thin. In the real theatre the “stock comic character who’s kicked offstage by the orchestra every time he tries to sing his ridiculous songs” (Gray’s words) would not have lasted 12 minutes before being hauled off with the hooked pole. The whole is prismatically scored, but something of a stylistic bran tub. The performances are nothing less than brilliant.'