As the Italian guitarist, composer and musicologist Angelo Gilardino writes in his booklet-note, ‘I am not concerned about whether my compositions actually conjure up for the listener images of the places in Sicily to which the titles refer: what I care about is the fact that I wrote them with Sicilian myths and locations in mind’. Myths and location thus ultimately serve a heuristic function.

Gilardino may stand in that great line of guitarist-performers that includes Paganini, Tárrega, Brouwer and countless more. Yet he professes not to be the best interpreter of his own music, leaving that privilege to others. One such is Sicilian guitarist Angelo Marchese, who studied with Gilardino and who here presents an attractive mix of the latter’s solo, chamber and orchestral works featuring classical guitar.

Gilardino’s style shows a predilection for contrapuntal writing and exploring subtle contrasts in timbre, register and articulation. In Au pays parfumé – five inventions for guitar and harpsichord – he gracefully limns the similarities and differences between these two plucked instruments as an affectionate dialogue. The sonatina Parthenicum ‘focuses on a ludic element’, while the Capriccio etneo delights in virtuosity; both are for solo guitar. And if the Concertino di Hykkara for guitar and chamber orchestra celebrates ‘the guitar as a bird that flies surrounded by light’, the effect is of an entire flock of birds predisposed to melancholy.

Performances are excellent throughout, with Marchese and his collaborators mining Gilardino’s witty, lyrical and contemplative seams alike with gusto and sympathy.