"Ernest Shand's Premier Concerto Pour Guitare, Op. 48." Soundboard: Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America (Winter, 1998, XXIV, No. 3, pp. 9-17).  

On February 7th, 1896, Ernest Shand was to perform Giuliani's Second Guitar Concerto with string quartet at the Glasgow Arts Club. At the rehearsal for this performance, the concert's organizer, Allan Macbeth, suggested Shand add his own concerto to the program—the Premier Concerto pour Guitare, Op. 48. Thus was premiered not only a major chamber work by the foremost English guitarist of the nineteenth century, and the first concertante guitar work to be written by an English composer, but perhaps the most substantial guitar chamber work of the romantic period. Likely written in 1895, Shand's Op. 48 was conceived not as an orchestral concerto, but as a chamber concerto scored for guitar with string quartet. Although unusual for the time, the work was not without precedent. For example, Fernando Sor's Fantasia Concertante (now lost), performed by Sor in London on several occasions between 1816 and 1817, was scored for guitar with string trio. Similarly, the three concerti Opp. 30, 36 and 70 of Mauro Giuliani exist in chamber as well as orchestral versions. However, Shand's 1896 performance, his only known performance of the Concerto, took place with piano accompaniment only—the cellist haven fallen ill before the concert—and it was in a version for guitar with piano accompaniment that the work mwas published that same year by Schott & Co. The original string parts have not been recovered— a circumstance which led to my reconstructing the string...