Really, it’s a contest between “Asturias” and “Recuerdos”—which is the most famous piece of all time in the classical guitar repertoire? (Hint: it’s a trick question—the most famous piece is the extremely banal “Spanish Romance,” because it’s so easy that every classical guitarist can play it on a first go, and audiences like it.)

This album clearly represents some Oedipal struggle between me and my betters, since I have recorded all three of the main “show-off” pieces: “Asturias,” “Recuerdos” and “Koyunbaba.” The goal, as with every piece designed to showcase virtuosity, is speed. “Recuerdos” makes use of a particular technique that I have attempted rather halfheartedly to learn several times over the years—tremolo, in which the thumb plays an arpeggiated chord, and the three playing fingers (Index, middle and ring) play a very rapid trill on a melody note above. When played perfectly so that all the notes have exactly the same time value and are played very, very fast, the melody note just sounds like a sustained blur, a singing voice, while the thumb’s notes play a supporting accompaniment. My tremolo always sounded like crap, and so I’d give up after an hour or so.

This time I stuck with it—not for hours, nor for days, but for weeks, playing always with a metronome, reading about the technique, watching inspirational YouTube videos about tremolo, experimenting with the shape of my fingernails, and on and on. Most of the time, my tremolo still sounded like crap, but every now and then, you’d hear it the way it was supposed to be, a dingle, sustained note humming above the melody. Not so much on this recording, which hardly represents my best. Still, it was the best I could manage the morning that I had free for recording.

According to one of my books, this only begins to occur at speeds of 136 bpm, and indeed, that was the point where it started to sound like tremolo. This recording is about 148 or 150.