Guitar concerto

Villa-Lobos wrote the piece in 1951 for Andrés Segovia and called it a fantasia concertante; Segovia asked for a cadenza, which the composer added in 1955, and the work was published as a concerto for guitar and small orchestra. Segovia gave the premiere in Houston in February 1956 with Villa-Lobos conducting. The scoring is deliberately light so that the guitar carries without amplification, and the three movements draw on the Brazilian material — modinha melody, choro rhythm — that Villa-Lobos had been putting into guitar music since the studies of the 1920s.