Born in 1941, Angelo Gilardino enjoys an extensive discography on Brilliant Classics, which has won international acclaim both for the beauty of the music and the authority and sensitivity of the performances. In 2008 Gilardino arranged a set of his solo studies based on the music of Mauro Giuliani and dedicated them to the ensemble on this album, the Quartetto Santorsola. They comprise seven brief pieces, with a dashing tarantella at their heart. The year previously, he had written a three-movement Sinfonietta expressly for guitar quartet, in which each movement pays tribute to an inspirational figure in the history of the instrument from the early part of the last century: Ferenc Farkas, Alexander Tansman and finally Teresa de Rogastis, evoking their musical personalities and playing styles within a fast-slow-fast design that makes for a substantial work in its own right. Gilardino’s own work is complemented here by his transcription of ‘Andalucia,’ a piano cycle by the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, as Gilardino himself observes in a booklet essay, the cycle belongs to the Spanish heritage of Albeniz and Granados: “It seemed appropriate to make this version for four guitars that, while not competing with the dynamic range of the piano original, nonetheless lives up to the color and brilliance of Lecuona’s inspiration.”