Throughout his life Rodrigo remained focused on the history, culture and topography of his native country; every musical utterance has a strong Spanish accent even when it is not implicit in the work’s title.

The Cinco piezas infantiles (1924) were written while he was a student of Dukas, as was the Zarabanda lejana (1926), his first work for the guitar, which he rearranged for the piano in the same year and, with the addition of the Villancico, set for orchestra in 1927-30. In their unaffected simplicity these works remain amongst his best and most evocative. They are both retrospective, looking back to the past – perhaps Rodrigo’s own childhood and, less exuberantly, the 16th century, the time of the vihuelista Luis Milán, named in the subtitle of the Zarabanda.

Soleriana (1953), of which there is no other complete listed recording, is another tribute to Spain’s musical past in which Rodrigo evokes the ethos of 18th-century Spain (as he imagined it) in eight movements based on, and with direct reference to, some of the hundred-plus keyboard sonatas of Antonio Soler, the ‘Spanish Scarlatti’. It is hard to escape the feeling that Rodrigo would have liked to have been alive in those earlier and more gracious (?) times.

In describing all the music in this recording as pleasing to the ear and calling for no heavy demand on the intellect, I do so not in any pejorative way. The works predate Rodrigo’s love affair with piping woodwind, self-quotation and the occasional lapse into the realm of the overblown such as the Concierto heroico.

Both performances and recording are first-class; so too would be the annotation if the English version of the original Spanish text bore fewer traces of overly literal translation, despite which I warmly recommend this issue.