Editorial Reviews

Well in advance of the various guitar quartets that inhabit concert series in North America and increasingly around the world, there were Los Romeros, formed in Spain but forced, due to the restrictive cultural policies of the Franco dictatorship, to move to southern California. Their example for other ensembles was fundamental, and the pattern of their repertoire, mixing Spanish material, arrangements of Baroque music, and newly commissioned pieces by composers as prominent as Rodrigo, has been widely reproduced. The norm for so many double-disc compilations is to get a bit more mileage out of an artist or group's last few releases. Nothing of the sort occurs here; the recordings date from between 1963 and 1985, all well before the death of Romeros founder Celedonio Romero, whose efforts as a composer (modeled on those of Rodrigo) are well represented. The "Concierto madrigal" and "Concierto andaluz" of Rodrigo, both written for Los Romeros, are included here. It's thus a pleasure to see that this "Golden Jubilee Celebration" is just that, going back to the group's earliest recordings in the early '60s. The program is divided up among productions of the entire Los Romeros group and recordings by the various Romero sons, who have become enduring concert attractions on their own; several feature the castanet playing of matriarch Angelita Romero, often quite subtle as in the "Sonata for four guitars and castanets" of Moreno Torroba on disc one. Not that everything would pass muster with a modern guitar quartet. The transcriptions of three Vivaldi concertos, performed with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, have some orchestral phrasing that sounds strange today (and there is no continuo), but recall that in the early '60s Vivaldi was almost unknown, both to the general public and to orchestral musicians, and the strangeness only underscores the pioneering quality of what the Romeros were doing. The remastering of the various sound sources is adequate. This is a needed retrospective on a group that can truly be said to have changed the concert scene. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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