BILL MCGLAUGHLIN: Probably the most famous piece to American audiences is the Concierto de Aranjuez.

PEPE ROMERO: Of course! Not only to American audiences, but it has become one [of the]—if not the—most popular concerto of our time.

MCGLAUGHLIN: And you told me that he writes that the slow movement is about the wind in the trees at the Spanish summer palace of Aranjuez. But you said there was another story.

ROMERO: This was the story for a long time. But Rodrigo, he did not really like so much, or did not used to like to say what it really represents. But the Aranjuez actually was written at what they called the worst time of their life. They had just lost their first baby. And the whole second movement was his way of conversing with God. And you have the pulse [plays] that goes on the complete time and is taken by the orchestra—this pulse, it goes on and on, and that signifies life, and his connection and awareness of life.

And the melody, first with the English horn, then with the guitar, and then going on through all the different instruments in the orchestra—culminating with a tremendous tutti—is all the different passions and feelings and emotions that he feels: the love for the baby, the love for his wife, asking God not to take her. Culminating in this tremendous tutti that at the end—

MCGLAUGHLIN: Could you remind us of how that goes?

ROMERO: Yes. [Plays theme]

MCGLAUGHLIN: And then it goes back to that pulse.

ROMERO: The pulse is always in it. And then at the end of the tutti when the guitar comes back, that is the accepting of God's will, and the feeling of peace, and the movement ends with the ascension of the soul of the baby.