Boccherini's guitar quintets came into being as adaptations of existing pieces at the request of the Marquis de Benavent who must have been a brilliant guitar player. Funnily the final move with the famous fandango goes back to a string quintet in which Boccherini imitates the fandango »Padre Basilio plays on the guitar«. So the original dance returns to where it came from and makes the strings glow. The theme of the »Ritirata di Madrid« (this is where the ensemble borrowed ist name from), returns in many transformations as well. LA RITIRATA also wish to commend to the esteemed listener another wrongly forgotten colleague of Boccherini from Madrid: Gaetano Brunetti. His comprehensive work has not been fully processed and edited, yet. One would like to hear more from him.