The ubiquitous Concierto de Aranjuez was written in 1939, since when Rodrigo has written no other solo-guitar concerto until this—which he announces as his ''farewell to the guitar''. If it does not achieve the same success as its predecessor he need not worry overly since he is already the richer for the $ 100,000 with which a wealthy Texan family commissioned it for their daughter's coming-out party, the eponymous fiesta. If the outer movements are lacking in sustained thematic material, as are those of Aranjuez, they are full of vitaminized energy—the third seems to pay its respects to Ponce's Concierto del sur, first-rate showcases for the soloist: the work ends with a solo flourish that could well persuade many guitarists to seek another profession. The heart of Aranjuez is its slow movement (who doesn't know the tune?) and here Rodrigo indulges nostalgically in self-quotation, the 'new' opening melody, again given first to the cor anglais, derived directly from the 'old'. Throughout, the resemblances are strong, not least in the orchestration with its piping woodwind, but the intervening 43 years show in harmony (the dissonances now as anguished as sardonic and teasing), overall complexity, and a far greater awareness of what is necessary to allow the guitar to be heard—Aranjuez, for all its success, is unrealistically orchestrated from this standpoint.
In their respective roles Rodrigo and Pepe Romero, the dedicatee, appear to have revelled in the technical difficulty of the work; Rodrigo pictures them both ultimately smoking their cigars in heaven and watching others trying to play it, which may prove to be not far from the truth. Reviewers, having scoured the language for superlatives on previous occasions (and rightly at the time), are often confronted with performances that leave them linguistically high and dry; it is in this position that I find myself here.
Father Celedonio Romero's Concierto de Malaga, converted from a solo-guitar suite to a concerto with the aid of Torroba, is a very pleasant work, based on flamenco forms (soleares, guajiros and tangos y tientos) and deploying a wide range of specialized guitar techniques, immediately appealing to anyone who isn't a hispanophobe. Flamenco specialists will complain that this music has moved far from its roots, which is true, but for the less-than-pure it will give immense pleasure.
In both works Romero's astonishing fluency and evenness of delivery, accomplished with seeming ease, bring the guitar to a level comparable with that already inhabited by other instruments in the best hands, and he couples it with elegant musicality and purity of tone. Orchestral support is admirable, recording is as clean as a whistle and though the balance favours the soloist, to a degree a concert performance cannot achieve, it is just right for a recording. Whatever the popular fate of these two concertos this will remain a marvellous display of the guitarist's art at its best.'