Recorded between 2010 and 2013, the three discs that comprise this box-set open up for the listener a strange, intricate musical world in which one of the greatest composers for the Baroque guitar, Francisco Guerau (1649-1722), attempts to dignify an instrument the qualities of which for many still fell short of those of its erstwhile courtly cousin, the vihuela. By 1694, when Guerau published Poema harmónico, the collection from which these works are taken, the vihuela had been resigned to musical history for a century or so. And yet the guitar, despite is acceptance by the French and English courts and its more sophisticated repertoire furnished by such player/composers as Francesco Corbetta and Gaspar Sanz, had yet fully to shake off its rustic connotations – which were, of course, also part of its attraction. As Javier Suárez-Pajares writes in his excellent booklet-note accompanying this set: ‘In a way, Guerau’s Poema harmónico is a mature creative response to [a] nostalgia for the vihuela and its times, for the noble instrument, and elevated music.’

Xavier Díaz-Latorre’s interpretations likewise constitute a ‘mature creative response’ to Guerau’s own music, which largely comprises sets of variations on passacalles, jácaras, españoletas, pavanas and suchlike, and features mainly plucked and often imitative writing, with strumming used either as an ornament or strongly implied in other cases. Díaz-Latorre dedicates these recordings to his former teacher and fellow Baroque guitarist Hopkinson Smith, and something of Smith’s highly refined approach can be heard here. Díaz-Latorre is however more willing to approach extremes – of passion, of introspection, of a modern musician’s ironic layering of nostalgia. The result is a kind of intimate theatre that is completely beguiling.