Before the coming of Segovia there was Catalan guitarist and composer Miguel Llobet to lay the groundwork – a fact Stefano Grondona is keen to remind us of in his excellent, if excessively polemical, booklet-notes. Llobet (1878‑1938) was the first classical guitarist to make extensive international concert tours; he broadened the guitar’s repertoire with original compositions, transcriptions and the commissioning of new works (Falla’s masterpiece Homenaje pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy being but one); in 1925 he made the first electric recordings on the instrument. Above all, he was a supremely gifted performer whose playing impressed not only fellow guitarists Segovia and Tárrega but also Albéniz, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. This set brings together all of Llobet’s compositions for solo guitar (the remainder of his output has already been or is in the process of being recorded by the present performer). Grondona plays an 1887 Torres and, for the Canciones catalanas, adopts gut treble strings and silver-wound silk basses.

The playing is exceptional. Apart from employing generous rubato and portamenti – integral to the correct interpretation of this repertoire – Grondona gently emphasises Llobet’s adopting a certain fingering or register in order to exploit every resource of the guitar. This is as obvious in “Respuesta”, the virtuoso title-track from the Seven Original Compositions, with its rapid tremolo and arpeggio effects, as it is in the veiled world of pianissimo harmonics found in many of the Catalan folksong arrangements (the introduction to “La Preço de Lleida” being a perfect example). An outstanding release in every way.