Rodrigo & Falla
Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra / Argenta

*NOTE: On side 1, there is a bubble in the vinyl that plays as a light thud for approx. the first 30 seconds of the second movement of Concerto For Guitar And Orchestra, Adagio.

*NOTE: Side 2 of this record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

This vintage London pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, these are the records for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of This Falla/Rodrigo Album Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1959
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing this record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sounds as good as this one does.

Rodrigo

Incredible sound, coupled with such a famous performance, make this one a Must Own. Never harsh, thin, dry or shrill (the way some Londons can be), there is strong low bass and lots of space and dimensionality to the sound.

If you were only to be allowed one Guitar Concerto recording, this would probably be the one to own. You will recognize the main theme instantly; it's the one Miles Davis appropriated for the astonishingly innovative Sketches of Spain album he did with Gil Evans.

Falla

Dynamic, rich and Tubey Magical with good space and a wide, deep stage. Unlike most other copies, the loudest string passages never get shrill from compressor or limiter problems.

The sound opens up and clears up here like almost no other we've heard.

What We're Listening For On Both Of These Classical Sides

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

The Sound of the Strings

On some copies of this album the strings are dry, lacking the full measure of Tubey Magic we know the tape to have. If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do. Certainly you are less likely to be bothered by it. Our 17DX is ruler flat and quite unforgiving in this regard. While it certainly makes our shootouts much easier, it does bring out the flaws in all but the best pressings -- exactly the job we require it to do.

TAS List

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of super discs, and with good reason: it’s wonderful!

Being on the TAS list doesn’t guarantee great sound, but Better Records does. If you don’t think a record sounds as good as we’ve described, we’ll always happily take it back and refund your money. Good luck getting ol’ Harry to send you a check when the TAS-approved pressings you pick up don’t deliver.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

A Must Own Classical Record

This Demo Disc quality recording is a masterpiece that should be part of any serious Classical Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

Concerto For Guitar And Orch. (Concierto De Aranjuez) - Joaquín Rodrigo

Allegro Con Spirito

Adagio

Allegro Gentile

Side Two

Nights In The Gardens Of Spain (Noches En Los Jardines De España) – Manuel de Falla

In The Generalife

Distant Dance

In The Gardens Of The Sierra De Cordoba

Joaquín Rodrigo / Concierto De Aranjuez

Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Sagunto, Spain, on November 22, 1901. In 1926, he moves to Paris, and becomes a student of Paul Dukas at the Schola Cantorum. From the French composer, Rodrigo learns the post-Debussy art of orchestration—the science of combining various instruments to create new sonorities, as well as the imaginative use of each intrument's particular color.

In the first movement of the Concierto, for example, the answer to the guitar's quasi-ostinato is given to the distinct and incisive attacks of the woodwinds, thus sustaining its rhythmic energy and vitality. In sharp contrast of mood, the characteristic rhythmic motion—alternating subdivisions of 2 and 3 beats per bar of the 6/8—is then picked-up, sotto voce, by the string's spiccato. Similarly, it is the natural melancholy of the English horn—reminiscent of Ravel's use of the instrument—that is chosen to answer the desperate chant of the guitar.

Apart from Paul Dukas, the general musical climate in France in the late-1920s—the neoclassical Six—also had an influence on Rodrigo's style. The typical pointillism of neoclassicism endows the orchestral texture with a much-needed transparency, without forfeiting the instrumentation's rich luster, thus ensuring the guitar's audibility.

Even though Rodrigo calls for a full orchestra—2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trombones, and strings—rarely are all instruments used together. Certain only provide brief commentaries, darken or enlighten the palette (as if a mosaic), and Rodrigo chooses with care—according to the rhythmic impulse, the desire to produce a purely Spanish tone, or even to underline the color of a particular key—which instruments will accompany the guitar.

The Concierto de Aranjuez was premiered in 1940, and has since been, with the composer's Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre, one of the most appreciated pieces of the repertoire for guitar and orchestra.

-Wikipedia

Manuel de Falla / Nights in the Gardens of Spain

• I. En el Generalife (In the Generalife): Allegretto tranquillo e misterioso
• II. Danza Lejana (A Distant Dance): Allegretto giuso
• III. En los Jandines de la Sierra de Córdoba (In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba): Vivo

“Without Paris I would have remained in Madrid submerged and forgotten, said Falla, who spent seven years in the French capital hobnobbing with the likes of Debussy, Dukas, Albéniz, and Fauré. In 1909, he began a series of solo piano pieces titled Nocturnes. Albéniz and pianist Ricardo Viñes convinced him to score the music for piano and orchestra.

Returning to Spain in 1914, Falla continued to work on what he now called Nights in the Gardens of Spain, first in Barcelona, and later at the home of Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol in the coastal fishing village of Sitges. Some say the music was inspired by Rusiñol's paintings of Spanish gardens.

Other possible sources of inspiration are poems by the French Francis Jammes or the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío. The influence of the impressionism of Falla's French friends has been detected by more than one writer. The first performance of Nights in the Gardens of Spain was given on April 9, 1916 by the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós, with pianist José Cubiles.

Subtitled “Symphonic impressions for piano and orchestra, in three parts,” the work has three movements, each bearing its own subtitle. The first, “In the Generalife,” refers to the fourteenth-century summer palace built by the Moors near the Alhambra in Granada.

“The mere enumeration of the titles should be sufficient guide to the hearer,” said Falla. “The music has no pretensions to being descriptive: it is merely expressive. But sometimes more than the sounds of festivals and dances has inspired these evocations in sound, for melancholy and mystery have their part also…. The composer has followed a definite design, regarding tonal, rhythmical and thematic material…. The end for which it was written is no other than to evoke places, sensations and sentiments…. The themes employed are based on the rhythms, modes, cadences and ornamental figures which distinguish the popular music of Andalusia, though they are rarely used in their original forms. The orchestration frequently employs certain effects peculiar to the popular instruments used in those parts of Spain.”

The opening germinal theme is virtually identical to a zarzuela melody by Amadeo Vives. Both musicians had lived in the same house in Madrid where an old blind violinist played the tune in the street below.

Biographer Jaime Pahissa describes the three movements: “The first is pure atmosphere--all soft and languid orchestral sounds with pleasing chords and a short simple melodic theme like the primitive songs which are so deeply rooted in man's daily life, in his prayers, street cries, lullabies and childhood songs.

“The second and third both have a dance-like quality. The former, distant and dreamlike at the outset, develops and grows more animated, passing without pause to the latter, which is strongly rhythmical but which, even so, ends in a melancholy vein. These two dances and the first nocturne contain the two characteristic aspects of Andalusian music, for they alternate between a vague nostalgic quality and a brisk, exciting rhythm."

The score calls for solo piano, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, celesta, piano, timpani, triangle, cymbals and strings.

-Charley Samson