Five days before the beginning of the 3rd International Guitar Festival (4-8 September) was certainly an appropriate time for the SSO to invite the world-renowned classical guitarist Angel Romero as the soloist for this concert, which was sponsored on the first night by Allen & Gledhill, Advocates & Solicitors (helping to assure a very good turnout).

Alert SSO-watchers will have noticed that the programme for the concert was changed: instead of "Angel Romero Plays Caledonio Romero and Vivaldi," the title originally had him playing "Vivaldi and Castelnuovo-Tedesco." Being an incurable Vivaldi lover, I jumped at this concert when I saw it listed in the season schedule, as it is not very often that the SSO features Baroque composers. As it turned out, the Vivaldi piece was only ten minutes long, and while it was a beautiful piece nicely performed, it definitely took a second seat to the new item on the programme, a 21-minute work by Angel Romero's father.

Now Romero's father is probably no more familiar to most of us as a composer than than Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, although classical guitar buffs will certainly have heard of both of them. Tedesco (1895-1968) was a pianist and prolific composer who was born and trained in Florence, Italy, but fled fascist anti-Semitism in 1938-39 for America, where he became an acclaimed composer of film music for MGM studios. His students in Los Angeles included John Williams, Henri Mancini and André Previn. He left a great legacy of guitar works, four of which, including the Concerto No. 1 that Romero had originally planned to play, are particularly well known.

(Right) Celedonio Romero in his home at Hollywood Hills, California

Coincidentally, Celedonio Romero (1913-96) was also a refugee from European political oppression who ended up making a highly successful career in California. He was born in Cuba while his father, an architect from Málaga, Spain, was building a concert hall there, but his family soon moved back to Málaga. He studied at the conservatories in Málaga and Madrid, and began his performing career at the age of 20.

Refused permission to perform outside of Spain by the Franco regime, he escaped with his family first to Portugal in 1957 and then to the US in 1958. Settling eventually in southern California, in 1960 he founded a guitar quartet with his sons Celin, Pepe, and Angel that became highly successful, eventually becoming known as "The Royal Family of Guitar." He had taught each of his sons to play the guitar from the age of two or three, and all three had made their debuts by age seven. In 1990, grandson Celino replaced Angel, and another grandson, Lito, joined the quartet upon Celedonio's death

Celedonio received many awards for his contributions to Spanish culture and the classical guitar, including Spain's highest award given to civilians (the title Commendador de Número de la Orden de Isabel la Católica) and the "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre," given by Pope John Paul II, for which he was subsequently addressed as Sir Celedonio Romero. His native city of Málaga created a museum and foundation in his name, and his adopted city of San Diego proclaimed 14 January "Celedonio Romero Day." His method of playing is taught in Master's and Doctoral programmes in North America and Europe.

With such an illustrious father as teacher and mentor, it is no wonder Angel Romero has become one of the most renowned classical guitar virtuosi of his generation. He is also an accomplished conductor, having studied under Eugene Ormandy. (He is both conductor and guitarist on a disk of Vivaldi concertos recorded with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields). He performed the entire score for a film directed by Robert Redford in 1989, and composed and directed the score for a film by the Mexican director Gabriel Retes in 1994. In February 2000, following in his father's footsteps, he received Spain's highest award for cultural achievement, the Grand Cross of Isabel la Catolica, and was knighted Sir Angel Romero.

Well, what about the concert? The Haydn symphony, while only twenty minutes in length, was well received by the audience, and as it is not part of the "standard repertoire," for many of us it was our first hearing. Haydn was a masterful composer wrote well over a hundred symphonies, oratorios, operas, masses, and chamber works, even excluding those doubtfully attributed to him, and I realized that I have a lot more listening to do. The symphony was played by an ensemble of about 33 orchestra members consisting basically of the strings, one or two bassoons, two horns and two oboes, so at times it had more the feel of chamber music than a symphony. The horns played a very crucial role, and there seems to have been a little inconsistency in their playing that detracted a bit from the performance. It is said that Haydn's works are "fragile" and difficult to play well. Personally, I did not get really interested in the work until the energetic and bright third movement, which had some obvious echoes of Baroque music.

But everyone was waiting for Romero to appear, and he was greeted with very warm applause. The Vivaldi piece is one that Vivaldi lovers at least are very familiar with, and I myself know it from the unforgettably energetic performance by the Italian baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico on their DVD Il Giardino Armonico. Since this period instrument ensemble plays this work on the lute, it took a lot of open-mindedness for me accept the much more subdued and less exotic sound of Romero's classical guitar.

But great compositions have the capacity to be played in many different styles, and I soon found myself drawn in, if not quite mesmerized. As I wrote in my notes, this is a bright, joyous, and incredibly sophisticated piece, deeply Italian in spirit. The second movement (the Largo) has one of the most beautiful beginnings I have ever heard. The orchestra back-up was small, with only 16 members, which assured that the guitar could be heard clearly throughout, though amplification was still required.

Next came the 21-minute work by Romero's father, which was also very well received. The only clearly Spanish feeling, however, was in the guitar playing itself and the occasional appearance of castanets in the accompaniment. Romero plays in a gentle, delicate way much of the time, and it took sharp listening to catch his much-touted technical virtuosity. The best place for doing so was the solo passage near the end of the piece, where one could fully hear his mastery of the instrument. The composition became more and more intriguing as it went on, and ended "with a brilliant cadenza full of typical flamenco flourishes," to quote the programme notes.

Personally, however, while I found the work itself intriguing and was usually able to hear the guitar, Romero's delicate style had less of the energy and vibrancy that I have come to associate with the Spanish guitar. The same goes for the concerto played by Romero on the EMI Classics double CD that was sold at the concert (works by the Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos). A New York Times reviewer wrote that Romero is "an artist of unfailing musicality. His playing is virtuosic but inevitably dignified." Perhaps, for this reviewer's taste, these performances were just a little too "dignified," like the picture at the right where "Sir Romero" displays the medal he received when he was knighted.

It is likely, though, that this concert and this CD only represented a small portion of what Romero is capable of, so classical guitar fans should try to get hold of a few of his best-reviewed recordings. On the basis of what I heard, however, for vivacity and energy in Spanish guitar playing, I would choose the Uruguay-born Eduarado Fernandez, who won first prize in the 1975 Andrés Segovia Competition in Mallorca and has issued 17 recordings on the Decca label, including (for you Baroque fans out there) works by Vivaldi and Bach.

The concert ended with a heavy and complex work by Richard Strauss called Metamorphosen. According to the programme notes it was written in 1945 as "an expression of mourning and tribute to Germany" after a catastrophe "for which there can be no consolation and in my old age, no hope." The SSO season booklet, however, states more pointedly that it "mourns the loss and destruction of Munich's opera house during the Second World War." Notable for its quotations from Beethoven and Wagner, it was as lugubrious as the notes describe it to be, but certainly interesting as a musical composition. It must have been a challenge for the orchestra to master. The end of the war is now 57 years behind us, but it is important that we periodically contemplate the horrific scale not just of the loss of life, but of the destruction of Culture that modern-style war brings about. (Iraq, also, is the site of one of the world's most ancient civilizations and the possessor of a rich cultural heritage).

In the original plan for this concert, Metamorphosen was slated to be the first work performed, with the Haydn symphony at the end. How well its 26 minutes of melancholy beauty would have gone over if it was played at the beginning is hard to guess, but it was certainly not the right piece to end a concert that was centred on the Spanish spirit of Angel Romero's classical guitar. Many of the concert-goers I spoke to after the concert said they really did not like this final piece, although the sentiment was not universal.

The concert was conducted by David Hoose, chair of the Conducting Department at the School of Music at Boston University and conductor of the university's symphony orchestra. Hoose is one of Lan Shui's teachers, and is known and respected by some of the other SSO members as well. Thus, whether or not it was deliberate, to invite him to Singapore to conduct a double concert on the Teachers' Day weekend was an appropriate gesture on the part of the SSO.