The focus of these three volumes is on concertos, the most popular and arguably the best segment of Rodrigo’s orchestral music. The best-known are those for guitar and orchestra, of the very numerous recordings of which these are ‘good enough to keep’. What other 20th-century concerto for any other instrument has achieved the status of ‘elevator and supermarket music’? The Concierto andaluz is the least striking, with a slight overdose of strumming but here played well enough – though with less impact than in the recording by its dedicatees, the original Romeros. The Concierto para una fiesta and the two-guitar Concierto madrigal will doubtless be added in due time to complete the set.

Lest anyone might think that the Concierto para piano y orquesta listed on Volume 4 is a previously overlooked work, I hasten to assure them that it is indeed the Concierto heroico in modestly repackaged form. The revision by Achúcarro was made (with the composer’s consent) in order to make the work ‘slightly more dynamic’. Thus the Allegro molto of the second movement has changed from ma pesante to ritmico. A faster tempo marking is also indicated but is not followed by Ferrándiz; his is a crisper and lighter account than that of Osoro in his 1980s recording of the original version, which reflects the revision as does also the removal of two flamboyant cadenzas. The ‘triumphant’ element is transferred to the Allegro maestoso, now shorn of its redundant description as the Final. This is now the definitive form and, for the present, performance of this work.

The ‘symphonic essay’ Juglares (1923) was Rodrigo’s first orchestral work, brief but characteristic of the music of Valencia, where he lived prior to going to Paris to study. It has no other current recording. All the remaining works on these three discs have alternative recordings but though one may prefer the warmer-sounding version of the Concierto de estío by Agustín León Ara, the composer’s son-in-law, in the above EMI set, these new recordings are in every respect at least comparable with the ‘opposition’. The amassing of Rodrigo’s total archive inevitably entails many duplications; this low-priced Naxos collection is an excellent and economical way of achieving the same end.