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A few years earlier, between Christmas 1938 and January 1939, Castelnuovo-Tedesco had completed his first Guitar Concerto, Op. 99: the first movement of which was written with the collaboration of Segovia. By making the most of its light and colorful instrumentation, the Concerto, premiered in Montevideo on October 1939, is a successful example of perfect balance between the guitar and orchestra. According to the composer, the first movement has a simple and graceful, yet solid, neoclassical style akin to that of Boccherini. The lyrical, touching Andantino alla romanza, whose main theme is first played by the guitar and then developed by the winds, with its reminiscences of Tuscan folksongs, somehow represents the composer’s farewell to his native Florence. A conclusive Ritmico e cavalleresco, with its bold and solemn gait, suddenly plunges us into the Spanish atmosphere of a poem of chivalry. In the orchestral reprise after the cadenza, one can hear two of the most characteristic stylistic elements of his compositional style: the extended use of the canon (which the composer himself regarded as his own musical signature), and the superimposition of the thematic materials.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed a Second Guitar Concerto in C Major Op.160, available here.