Rodrigo & Castelnuovo-Tedesco: 2 Favorite Guitar Concertos

Both these concertos were little more than 25 years old, and John Williams younger still, when this recording was made in 1965. The Australian guitarist was joined by the Philadelphia Orchestra under its legendary conductor Eugene Ormandy, a canny match-up that instantly springs to sensuous life in Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Rhythmic incisiveness and unrestrained emotions work in harmony in their big-hearted performance, qualities established by Williams at the outset and richly complemented by Ormandy’s fabulous Philadelphians. The famous slow movement unfolds here as a compassionate lament for a lost world, amplified by the elegant dialogue between soloist and orchestra. They are equally in tune with the sunny disposition of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s neo-classical Concerto in D Major for Guitar and Orchestra, written in the year he arrived in the US as a refugee from fascist Italy.