1927 Domingo Esteso SP/CSAR

A 1927 classical guitar by Domingo Esteso, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides, built in Madrid for Romero y Fernández of Buenos Aires – its label is numbered 1641.

Built for the Buenos Aires Market

As its label shows – "Fabricación especial para mis únicos representantes en la República Argentina, Romero & Fernández, Buenos Aires" – this guitar was made for the Buenos Aires dealer that imported the finest Spanish instruments of the day into South America.

Sound and Condition

The volume is huge even by modern standards, and the warm, rich, played-in sound is magical from the bass to the trebles – plump, lyrical and responsive to every subtlety of touch. The guitar has two well-repaired hairline cracks but is otherwise in perfect playing condition and structurally sound.

Heard on "Valseana" by Marc Teicholz

This Esteso is one of the 18 guitars of Valseana, the GSI CD on which Marc Teicholz gives each instrument its own waltz – here Paulo Bellinati's "Um Amor de Valsa" (track 12).

Valseana – Marc Teicholz

Domingo Esteso: From the Manuel Ramírez Workshop to Gravina 7

Domingo Esteso (1882–1937) is one of the great names of the early Madrid school of guitar making. Born on May 12, 1882, in San Clemente, in the province of Cuenca, he learned his trade in the Madrid workshop of Manuel Ramírez, where he worked alongside Santos Hernández, Modesto Borreguero and Enrique García – the shop that carried the legacy of Antonio de Torres into the 20th century. After Ramírez died in 1916, Esteso went on building for his widow, already with his own name on the labels, and around 1919 he opened his own workshop at Calle Gravina 7, where his wife, Nicolasa Salamanca, varnished the guitars. His flamencos were played by the great names of the day, among them Ramón Montoya and Niño Ricardo, and his classical guitars are prized today for their elegance, clarity and natural, woody voice.

Guitars for Buenos Aires and the Birth of the Conde Dynasty

Many of Esteso's finest guitars were made for Argentina, then one of the richest countries in the world, under a special label for Romero y Fernández of Buenos Aires, his sole agents there – some of them branded "Guitarras Iberia". In 1926 his nephew Faustino Conde joined the workshop, followed by his brothers Mariano and Julio. After Esteso's death in Madrid in 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, they carried on at Gravina 7 as "Viuda y Sobrinos de Esteso" and later as Conde Hermanos – the start of a family tradition continued today by Felipe Conde and his son, Felipe Conde Crespo.