It’s not often a composer writes a consolation concerto for a virtuoso, but that’s the case with Joaquín Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre. The work was performed at SFCM in May by 2024 Guitar graduate and concerto competition winner Samuel Liang at a sold-out SFCM Orchestra concert.

This was Liang’s first time playing with an orchestra, made especially resonant by it being composed of his classmates.

“I’ve done many solo competitions in my life,” he explains. (That is an understatement: Liang is the youngest guitarist to have won eight guitar competitions, including internationally.) “But the guitar concerto competition is the only ensemble competition I did, and that was only playing with a piano. I always imagined playing with the orchestra, but I just never got to, so I’m very excited.”

SFCM Guitar Department Chair David Tanenbaum says that Rodrigo’s most famous piece, the Concierto de Aranjuez, was written in 1939, three years into the Spanish Civil War. “The Spanish Civil War divided society terribly,” he explains. “Andrés Segovia was making a mark around that time and had pro-Franco sympathies [General Francisco Franco headed the military junta representing the eventually triumphant conservative Nationalist party], “and so he left the country; his house was ransacked.”

Concierto de Aranjuez, meanwhile, made Rodrigo a star. “The piece became instantly hugely successful,” Tanenbaum says. “After the premiere, Rodrigo was carried through the streets of Madrid on the shoulders of the audience. So you have this divide: Segovia living in Montevideo and Uruguay during World War Two and Rodrigo celebrating the success of this piece, with it being carried around the world by other guitarists. So Segovia, the most important guitarist of the 20th century, never played the most important piece of the 20th century—the Concierto remains the most famous and played concerto for any instrument of the 20th century, which is extraordinary.”

David Tanenbaum; Credit: Carlin Ma

Fantasia para un gentilhombre, was written with Segovia in mind as the titular gentleman, Tanenbaum explains. “It was to connect the two of them, and while it never became as famous as Aranjuez, it certainly is the second-most-famous Rodrigo piece. It was written in 1954, and a very cool thing is that it was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony on March 5, 1958.”

Rodrigo “never makes things easy” for guitarists, Tanenbaum explains. “He loves [intervals of] seconds when he can do it, and he just tends to write awkwardly. It's kind of tensile music; it doesn't breathe as easily as some other music, and it's hard to do on the guitar.” Liang adds that Rodrigo’s scalar runs are “like the longest scales in the world, and Fantasia actually has one of the longest scales in a cadenza in the entire guitar repertoire.”

Still, Liang was up to the task, Tanenbaum says. “Samuel has great chops; he's just one of the most talented students I've had. He brings a kind of positive attitude and light wherever he goes, he’s just an extraordinary young man.”

Some would even say a gentilhombre.

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