For many years now we’ve enjoyed a steady stream of recordings in which David Russell has raised mere aptness to the level of a rhetorical virtue. His actions always fit the sense; free from a tendency to over-sell that afflicts many guitarists attempting this repertoire, his truly transcendental technique illuminates both slight and sober alike. So it is with this latest release, a selection of pieces by four of Spain’s better-known guitarist-performers of the recent past.

The gaudy, well-crafted confections that open the disc, Regino Sainz de la Maza’s Zapateado and Rondeña, soon scurry off to make way for the ambivalent hues of Tárrega disciple Miguel Llobet’s 10 Canciones Populares Catalanas. These simple harmonisations of Catalan folk songs have the evanescent fragrance of Balthus interiors sans girls; the same melodies, here rendered by Llobet in washes of changing registers and tones, that inspired Mompou’s forays into the genre. Russell beats Llobet at his own game, not only matching him colour for colour but balancing chords and teasing out phrases in such a way as to heighten the emotional pitch (no pun intended) considerably – try ‘El testament d’Amelia’ or ‘El mestre’.

Andrés Segovia’s compositional efforts are represented by two studies and two ‘anecdotes’, charming but highly derivative – you wish his compositions exhibited the same wilful individuality that so marked his playing. Here Russell is big on imagination, small on sentiment. The relentlessly cheerful music of Emilio Pujol, another Tárrega protégé and an early advocate of even earlier music, gets the same treatment; I particularly enjoyed the Brahms-inflected Impromptu.

This is mature, sophisticated playing of honest, enjoyable music; Telarc’s sound is, as always, exceptional.