Rodrigo | Concertos · Songs with guitar · Guitar solos

If you already have top-rated versions of either or both of these pieces you may rest content with them, but if you decide (for whatever reason) to add one of these new recordings to your collection then your choice may depend on the other items they contain... Barrueco adds two solos, neither one yet dulled by over familiarity. The Zarabanda lejana, Rodrigo’s first solo work for the guitar, is given with the utmost expressivity, and Un tiempo fue 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 Placido 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 4/1998, John Duarte

MP3 HQ · 115 MB