Rodrigo - Concierto de Aranjuez: II. Adagio (Aranjuez Mon Amour) [HD]

The Concierto de Aranjuez is a composition for classical guitar and orchestra by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Written in 1939, it is far and away Rodrigo's best-known work, and its success established his reputation as one of the most significant Spanish composers of the twentieth century.

The Concierto de Aranjuez was inspired by the gardens at Palacio Real de Aranjuez, the spring resort palace and gardens built by Philip II in the last half of the 16th century and rebuilt in the middle of the 18th century by Ferdinand VI. The work attempts to transport the listener to another place and time through the evocation of the sounds of nature.
Rodrigo and his wife Victoria stayed silent for many years about the inspiration for the second movement, and thus the popular belief grew that it was inspired by the bombing of Guernica in 1937. In her autobiography, Victoria eventually declared that it was both an evocation of the happy days of their honeymoon and a response to Rodrigo's devastation at the miscarriage of their first pregnancy. It was composed in 1939 in Paris.

Composed in early 1939, in Paris, amid the tensions of the impending war, it was the first work Rodrigo wrote for guitar and orchestra. The instrumentation is unusual: rarely does the guitar face the forces of a full orchestra. Instead, the guitar is never overwhelmed, remaining the solo instrument throughout.
Rodrigo, nearly blind since age three, was a pianist. He did not play the guitar, yet he still managed to capture and project the role of the guitar in Spanish music.

The second movement, the best-known of the three, is marked by its slow pace and quiet melody, introduced by the Cor Anglais, with a soft accompaniment by the guitar and strings. A feeling of quiet regret permeates the piece. Ornamentation is added gradually to the melody in the beginning. An off-tonic trill in the guitar creates the first seeds of tension in the piece; they grow and take hold, but relax back to the melody periodically. Eventually, a climactic build-up starts. This breaks back into the main melody, molto appassionato, voiced by the strings with accompaniment from the woodwinds. The piece finally resolves to a calm arpeggio from the guitar, though it is the strings in the background rather than the guitar’s final note that resolve the piece.

A number of musicians have since reinterpreted the work, usually the second movement, perhaps most famously jazz musician Miles Davis in the company of arranger Gil Evans. On the album Sketches of Spain (1960), Davis says: "That melody is so strong that the softer you play it, the stronger it gets, and the stronger you play it, the weaker it gets."