Virtuosity across generations

Clockwise (from top): Celin, Pepe, Lito, and Celino Romeros are known as the ''royal family of the guitar.''

A frigid January night marked a triumphant homecoming to Jordan Hall of the "royal family of the guitar," as the Romeros Guitar Quartet is sometimes billed.

It was in this hall in 1961 where the quartet played its first East Coast US concert. In Saturday's Celebrity Series of Boston performance, the ensemble demonstrated that the intervening years and changes in the family's player list have not diminished the virtuosity of the group.

The quartet was founded almost a half-century ago in Spain by Celedonio Romero, who died in 1996. His sons Celin, 73, and Pepe, 64, have carried on to lead the quartet, playing alongside Lito (son of Celedonio's son Angel) and Celino (son of Celin).

On Saturday, the Romeros played in varying configurations. Celino took center stage to tackle Gaspar Sanz's "Suite Espanola." The senior generation strummed through Albeniz's "Granada," a serenade-like portrait of the famed Spanish city.

"My memory is getting pretty bad," Pepe joked with the audience, dashing onstage as he remembered he was to play the piece with his brother Celin.

Historic Jordan Hall, with its Renaissance detailing, was an appropriate setting for a program that often evoked the Old World. Boccherini's Guitar Quintet No. 4 "Introduction" and "Fandango" recalled Castilian and Andalucian courtship dances. Harvest and wedding songs seeped to the surface of Torroba's Estampas. But the program also included works by later composers, including Lorente, Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos, Terrega, and by Pepe Romero himself.

By turns precise and showy, the quartet elicited all manner of sounds from their instruments: from snare drum-like rat-a-tatting to castanet clacking. The playing reached an energetic high point during the two encores: "Noche en Malaga" by Celedonio Romero, and a rousing Flamenco improvisation to close out the show.