Manuel Barrueco / Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia / Víctor Pablo Pérez CONCIERTO BARROCO

Here are five excellent works for guitar and orchestra. The longest are the pair by Roberto Sierra (b. 1953), each a few seconds over 13 minutes. Folías is a modern set of variations on that tune most of us first met in Corelli’s variations (La folia). Concierto barroco combines Afro-Cuban and Baroque elements. It also contains some modern dissonances or polytonalities along with its neo-Baroque passages. Folías sounds rather like Richard Strauss combined with Manuel de Falla and seasoned with a dash of Joaquín Rodrigo. Sierra’s pieces begin and end the concert, while Vivaldi’s typically vigorous—and genuinely Baroque—concertos are second and fourth on the disc. Arvo Pärt’s mesmerizing Fratres serves as centerpiece.
Pärt wrote Fratres for violin, string orchestra, and percussion, but suggested this arrangement when Manuel Barrueco approached him about writing a work for guitar. I have compared the guitar version with the original on a Deutsche Grammophon disc with violinist Gil Shaham, conductor Neeme Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony; either version holds my attention very well indeed.
As expected, Barrueco plays splendidly, and so does the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia, based in La Coruña—yet another provincial band capable of world-class performance. Koch delivers deliciously warm and vivid sound. This disc will be high on my list of potential holiday presents. (Robert McColley, FANFARE)

Manuel Barrueco BACH & DE VISÉE

Robert de Visée The so-called 'baroque' guitar is a recognizable ancestor of today's classic instrument, but whereas the modern instrument has six single strings, the earlier one had five octave- or unison-tuned pairs of strings. These latter usually stood in some form of re-entrant tuning i.e. the lowest-placed strings were not always the lowest-pitched ones, and this produced ambiguous textures (which, if any, are the bass notes) that the modern guitar cannot imitate. At the same time it is possible to produce adaptations that are satisfactory in their musical effect, and the unidentified arranger of the items by Visee in this recording has done just that. Visee, court guitarist to Louis XIV of France, and one of the most refined composers of music for the five-course guitar (all those who composed for this idiosyncratic instrument also played it), left 12 suites of 'baroque' constitution, some clearly inviting the player to choose his movements (as Francois Couperin did in his ordres), as well as a number of other separate pieces. Suite No. 11 may be and here is played in its entirety. Lully was Visee's superior at court but the tribute paid in the arrangement of the Ouverture from Lully's ballet La grotte de Versailles was a sincere one. Barrueco delivers this ornament-encrusted music in magnificent style.
The items of Bach deserve no lesser encomium, for Barrueco is one of the most cultured guitarists on the present world stage. The annotator, Matthias Henke, bypassing the ambiguity of its inscription, avers that ''[BWV998] can be termed an original work for the lute'', a view not widely shared even by lutenists, who believe it to have been intended for the lute-harpsichord. Indeed, the scholar Eugen Dombois considers the allegro to be the least likely of the three movements to have been meant for the lute, but according to Henke ''[it] takes us entirely back into the world of the lute''. Fortunately, no such doubts attend the quality of Barrueco's performance of either this (probably assembled, rather than originally written in that form) triptych or BWV1004, borrowed from the violin and much in vogue with guitarists at the moment. However, few are likely to match the poise, style and comprehensive command that Barrueco brings to the music in this finely engineered recording, one of the best I have heard for a long time.' (Gramophone)

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)