The year following the composition of his Concert for flute and instrumental ensemble, Llanas undertook a second concert with the guitar as the protagonist, or more specifically with the guitar of the excellent guitarist from Lleida, Carles Trepat, who had asked him for a concert. The opportunity presented itself when the Porta Ferrada Festival organizers asked Llanas for a work of this nature to be premiered in its 1988 edition. On August 8th of that year, Trepat, accompanied by the Zagreb soloists premiered this new work in Sant Feliu de Guixols. It was also presented three months later at the “Centro de Arte Reina Sofía” in Madrid during a concert honoring the painter Lucio Muñoz. The work is dedicated to Carme, the composer’s wife. Although the concerto is built in three movements with the classical Allegro-Lento-Allegro, there is not the slightest formal reference to the classical structure. Throughout the first movement – Memoria – (Catalan for: memory) strings and guitar evoke aesthetics which are well-known by everyone and etched into our memories, although in apparent, albeit controlled, disarray. The presence of the past appears, in a different way, in the second movement – Rerafons – (Catalan for: underlying context or backdrop) where a string quartet evokes the expanded harmonies of a J.S. Bach chorale, which seem to stubbornly oppose the soloist and the rest of the strings. The last movement – Toccata – maintains a gentle dialogue, unloading the tension that characterized the previous movement.
Listen to the first movement Memoria:
Listen to the second movement Rerafons:
Listen to the third movement Toccata: