It was Segovia who, over half a century ago, pointed guitarists in the direction of Scarlatti and, with arrangements of two minuets from Platee, Rameau. Scarlatti's is a road they have since explored with enthusiasm, but Rameau's has remained very much a minor one. Though many of Scarlatti's sonatas will remain beyond the reach of a solo guitarist, the number of those transmuted with varying success has been materially increased, notably by Williams, Brouwer, Lendle, Fisk, and now Fernandez.
Perhaps the most successful are the slower ones (Kk206 and 544), enhanced by the guitar's expressive capacities, whilst the quicker ones depend more on the nature of the technical problems they pose; thus, whilst the performance of Kk141 is a technical tour de force the strain shows a little in others. The main problem for a guitarist with French baroque music is that of its profuse ornamentation, in which respect Rameau is more approachable than, say, Couperin. It is not, however, the reason for Fernandez's few underpaced items, for he handles it well; Les cyclopes simply demands too much of even his considerable dexterity, but in the cases of the far easier Gigue en rondeau II and La villageoise tempo must be ascribed to choice. Fernandez's tone is often rather harsh and he is prone to over-heavy accenting, as in Kk175, but overall it is a brave exercise, straddling the line that separates what can be convincingly done from that over which a question mark hangs.'