ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the circumstances in which the Concierto Heroico was interpreted as a celebratory work, and Rodrigo's own contribution to this interpretation. It took the Franco regime a whole 25 years to commission a musical work or rather, a set of works, as will be explained to celebrate the triumph of its troops in the Spanish Civil War back in 1939. This happened in 1964, when the Ministry for Information and Tourism asked four young Spanish composers, namely, Luis de Pablo, Cristbal Halffter, Miguel Alonso and Angel Arteaga, of the time to compose works to be played at the so-called Peace Concert. On the occasion of first performance of the Concierto Heroico in Madrid, Rodrigo published in Pueblo his own comment of the work. However, in a successive passage of the Pueblo article, Rodrigo carefully rejects any programmatic interpretation of his work, arguing that the genre of the concerto itself is incompatible with the introduction of a definite programme.
