Guitar Concerto no. 1 in D major, op. 99

Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed the First Guitar Concerto in 1939 for Andrés Segovia, who had asked him for it after hearing a guitar piece of his four years earlier; Segovia gave the first performance in Montevideo on 28 October 1939. It was among the earliest guitar concertos of the twentieth century and effectively created the genre. The composer wrote it as Italy's racial laws closed his career at home; within months he had left for the United States, where he settled in Los Angeles and spent the rest of his life writing film music and teaching.