Jacob Kellermann JOAQUÍN RODRIGO Concierto de Aranjuez

 

CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ

Narciso Yepes JOAQUÍN RODRIGO Concierto de Aranjuez

 

CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ - FANTASÍA PARA UN GENTILHOMBRE

 

Tomatito CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ

 

CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ

 

LES MUSIQUES DE PICASSO

LES MUSIQUES DE PICASSO

 

Thibaut Garcia ARANJUEZ

 ARANJUEZ

Orquesta de la Comunidad Valenciana / Joan Enric Lluna SOLERIANA

SOLERIANA

sixty1strings AMARABÀ

AMARABÀ

Pedro Rojas-Ogáyar RODRIGO Guitar Works

                                                                   GUITAR WORKS

Daniel Casares / Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga / Arturo Díez Boscovich CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ - LA LUNA DE ALEJANDRA

Daniel Casares is an extremely talented young flamenco guitarist born in Estepona, Málaga, in 1980. He discovered at an early age that he had a natural talent for playing the guitar, and his passion was fuelled by the music that he listened to at home as a child. It was from the soul of this music that Daniel started his journey through the mysterious and passionate world of flamenco. He spent his youth learning and understanding the rudiments of the flamenco guitar, listening to the masters like Ramón Montoya and Niño Ricardo, but his influences are not solely flamenco artistes.

He studied under several guitar teachers in Estepona and Málaga and gave his first live performance at the age of ten. His career started to take shape when he participated in the project A la Guitarra de Estepona, a recording on which he appeared with a collection of artistes native to his birthplace.

Six years later, at a mere nineteen years of age, he produced his first solo CD, Duende Flamenco, and from this point on Daniel Casares began to forge a career as a guitar maestro. (Tony Bryant)

Christoph Denoth / London Symphony Orchestra / Jesús López Cobos NOCTURNOS DE ANDALUCÍA

The ever versatile LSO also features on this exceptional album, where the London-based guitarist Christoph Denoth winningly mixes the familiar and the unfamiliar. His account of Rodrigo’s evergreen Concierto de Aranjuez, with the orchestra winningly conducted by the veteran Spanish conductor Jesús López Cobos, is excellent, and can be highly placed in a competitive field. But the real reason for buying this well filled 68-minute album is the fill-ups. Lorenzo Palomo’s Nocturnos de Andalucía is a substantial 40-minute, six movement piece for guitar and orchestra, which revisits the same Spanish themes and moods that so inspired the great late-19th century Spanish guitar virtuoso/composers.

It’s attractive, without ever being too comfortable, and backward looking. It’s very cleverly scored for large orchestra, and will give much pleasure. There’s also a delightful lollipop at the end, with Denoth’s own arrangement for guitar and orchestra of Joaquín Malats’ Serenata Española—4½ minutes of pure joy. (David Mellor)

Manuel Barrueco / Plácido Domingo RODRIGO Concierto de Aranjuez - Fantasia para un Gentilhombre

This CD contains the umpteenth recordings of the Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasia para an gentilhombre, of which there are already so many versions that the nomination of an all-time best defies my humble capacities. Suffice it to say that these are amongst the very best and, if these works are absent from your collection then [this] will serve you very well. Barrueco and [David] Russell are members of the guitar's top-drawer elite - giving performances of crystalline clarity - and they are both excellently supported by their orchestras... Barrueco adds two solos, neither one yet dulled by overfamiliarity. The Zarabanda lejana, Rodrigo's first solo work for the guitar, is given with the utmost expressivity, and Un tiempo rue Italica famosa, a tribute to the history of a once-famous Roman city near Seville, is delivered with panache; rapid passages in Rodrigo's guitar works are almost invariably scales, here (and elsewhere) appropriately testifying to the influence of flamenco.
Barrueco has one more trump card to play - his partnership with Plácido Domingo in four songs, selected from those for which Rodrigo himself has made adaptations for the guitar of the original piano accompaniments (the texts are given in four languages). Their coming together was no public relations exercise, for both are longstanding devotees of Rodrigo's music, and it shows. The partnership extends through the whole of this recording, in which Domingo also conducts the orchestra, an exercise in which both parties demonstrate their happy meeting of minds. (Gramophone)

Miloš Karadaglić / London Philharmonic Orchestra ARANJUEZ

For his third album on Mercury Classics/Deutsche Grammophon, international chart-topping classical guitarist Miloš Karadaglić takes the world-famous Concierto de Aranjuez as the starting point for a journey across the Spanish landscape, paying tribute to the great composers and musicians who placed the modern classical guitar firmly on the international stage.

The Concierto de Aranjuez was written by Joaquín Rodrigo for the Spanish guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza and very soon became not just the most famous Spanish guitar concerto but also the most famous guitar concerto of all time; its ravishing slow movement was taken up and arranged by musicians of all genres, from Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Jim Hall to Herb Alpert, from Frank Sinatra to José Carreras. And now, Miloš has produced a standalone new interpretation of Aranjuez; the definitive version for our time.

Miloš sees the work as “the holy grail of the guitar repertoire and an endless source of inspiration. The first and last movements sparkle with energy and rhythm. They paint the landscape of nature, happiness and love. The legendary second movement takes us to a different reality, where emotions overflow and a string becomes a voice.”

For the recording of the new album Aranjuez, Miloš was joined by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios in London. Miloš recalls that “Yannick’s energy is infectious and our collaboration was the most electric experience. When we met before the recording sessions to run through the music together, he taught me things I shall always be grateful for. For example, he asked me to rethink my approach to Rodrigo’s notorious scale passages. He suggested that, instead of focusing on each note, I should think of them as gestures – taking each one in a different direction as if they were brushstrokes. At that moment I relaxed completely; I had found the final piece of a puzzle, a piece I had been looking for all along.”

Aranjuez is a celebration of the most popular Spanish works for guitar and orchestra, which includes Rodrigo’s Fantasía para un gentilhombre, and it explores the birth and recognition of the modern guitar in the 20th century. “The guitar as we know it today emerged only at the end of the 19th century, after centuries of various transformations. The Spanish guitar maker Antonio de Torres constructed an instrument larger in size and tone than its predecessors, and that marked the beginning of a new age. The guitar was ready to leave the elegant aristocratic salon for the concert platform…”

For Miloš it has been a long journey from Montenegro, where he was born and at eight started playing the guitar. Now a household name, he has become among his generation one of the most successful champions of his instrument. London, where he now lives, played a decisive role in his career, particularly during his years as a student at the Royal Academy of Music.