Page 20 - The Plymouth Philharmonic Legends and Legacies 11-2-2024 digital program flipbook

Fantasía para un gentilhombre Joaquín Rodrigo
(Fantasia for a Nobleman) (1901 — 1999)
JOAQUÍN RODRIGO VIDRE (who was raised to the hereditary title of 1st MARQUESS
OF THE GARDENS OF ARANJUEZ in 1991 by Spain’s King Carlos I), was born on November
22, 1901, and died on July 6, 1999. He married Turkish-born pianist Victoria Kamhi in 1933,
and her memoir Hand in Hand with Joaquín Rodrigo: My Life at the Maestro’s Side
(translated by Ellen Wilkerson in 1992) provides the most comprehensive details about his
life and work.

The Fantasía para un gentilhombre was composed for master guitarist Andrés Segovia.
It premiered on March 5, 1958, with Basque conductor Enrique Jordá leading the San
Francisco Symphony, and Segovia featured as the soloist. Jordá (1911-1996) served
as the Director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1954-1963. Like Rodrigo’s more
frequently played Concierto de Arajuez (1939), it features beautiful writing for wind
soloists, virtuosic classical guitar, and string orchestra. The Fantasía’s four movements
are based on solo guitar works by Gaspar Sanz (Francisco Bartolomé Sanz Celma,
1640-1710), published in his Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española (1674-1697,
Saragossa). Sanz studied under the choirmaster to the Vatican and in the Royal Chapel
at Naples before returning to teach guitar to Don Juan (1629-1679), son of King Charles
II of Spain. His monumental collection of (five-stringed) guitar studies and ninety
compositions was dedicated to Don Juan.

The first movement opens with the melodic Villano that passes back and forth between
the solo guitarist and the orchestra. Its second section, titled Ricercare, develops
intriguing variations over a two-bar phrase. The lyrical, haunting Españoleta, is richly
accompanied by the strings; its central section features trumpet and flute fanfares and
military drum rhythms played by the orchestral strings, recalling Sanz’s time spent at
the court of Renaissance Naples. The Danza de las Hachas (Dance of the Axes), builds
a whirlwind of sound from vivacious rhythms typical along the northern Mediterranean
seacoast. Rodrigo hailed from Valencia and often incorporated local folk dances in his
guitar music. Rodrigo combines Renaissance folk dance from the Canary Islands with
bird calls in his rousing conclusion.
Rodrigo served as a professor of music history at Complutense University of Madrid
from 1943-1999, and his first compositions date from 1923. Blind since the age of
three, he notated his music in Braille, and they were transcribed for publication. As a
young man in the southern Spanish province of Valencia, he became known as both
a composer and a virtuoso pianist before studying multiple times in Paris, France.
As a musicologist, he published a 1936 paper about sixteenth-century vihuela music,
championing the work of Spanish composers Luis de Milán and Gaspar Sanz.
The final Canario movement of this guitar concerto was covered by the English
progressive rock band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in 1978 (the final song on Side A
of Love Beach, their last studio album). The central Adagio movement of Rodrigo’s
1939 Concierto de Aranjuez is recognizable to both classical listeners and jazz fans:
its haunting English horn and guitar duet appears on Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain

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18 Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra