Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.
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It was in 1951 that Segovia asked Joaquín for a new concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra. In order to exchange ideas, he came one summer afternoon to our chalet in Torrelodones and stayed to have supper…After the triumph of Concierto de Aranjuez in Paris, Joaquín felt no great desire to compose another concerto, and he postponed the work. One day, however, he told me that he had thought it over and that he would write a “Suite” on themes collected by Gaspar Sanz, the famous guitarist of the court of Felipe IV. The title would be Fantasía para un gentilhombre, and he would also dedicate it to Andrés Segovia, whom he greatly admired, as a tribute…At Christmas, Andrés Segovia unexpectedly came to our house, asking to look over the score…Just as I was accompanying him at the piano in the first measures, there was a power failure, and the whole apartment was plunged into darkness. Thanks to two candles, we surmounted the difficulty. The work played marvellously under the great artist’s fingers, and the tenuous light lent an archaic atmosphere, very fitting, above all for the ‘dance of the torches’.
Gaspar Sanz was a seventeenth-century composer, priest and guitarist, particularly renowned for his three-volume pedagogical treatise on the classical guitar, Instrucción de musica sobra la guitarra española. Rodrigo selected a number of themes by Sanz, expanding them into a 20-minute concerto for guitar and orchestra, uniting Segovia and Sanz through the centuries with the marriage of ancient dances and his own brand of twentieth-century lyricism. The gentleman of the title is normally assumed to be Segovia, but presumably also refers to Sanz as a ‘gentleman’ of the court. The first performance of the work, on March 5 1958, with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Enrique Jordá, was a great success for both composer and soloist.
from notes by M Ross © 2011