Columbia records leased it, with an up-front payment of $50,000 each. Under the general management of Louis Sterling, Columbia acquired a number of European, Asian, and U.S. recording companies in 1925. Sterling soon after arranged for a holding company to combine Columbia and the Carl Lindstrom group, which included Parlphone and Odeon, the companies that seem to be the ones under which Llobet's recordings were released. Llobet toured Europe again in 1930-1931, performing in London, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Bologna among others. On hearing him in Berlin Paul Hindemith declared an intent to compose for the guitar, but did not follow this through - Hindemith's only work for guitar, the Rondo for Three Guitars, had been written in 1925. From 1932 to 1934, Llobet taught the young Cuban virtuoso José Rey de la Torre at his home in Barcelona. He does not appear to have performed much at this time, but maintained his artistic contacts. Rey writes: "At the time I arrived in Barcelona in 1932, he had almost retired from the concert stage. During the three years that I spent there he left town only once for a month's tour of Scandinavia." Llobet seems to have enjoyed a somewhat reclusive retirement from the concert stage, Rey de la Torre who, as Llobet's pupil, may well have been his most frequent visitor, writes that "Llobet did not have many visitors..." He did seem to go out to concerts frequently, walking with his wife, to the Palau close to his home, and met a few influential artists at his large apartment at Via Layetana No. 46 in Barcelona: Emilio Pujol was a frequent guest and Manuel de Falla is known to have visited whenever in that city. The statement by Philip J. Bone in The Guitar and Mandolin that Llobet "was killed in 1937, in an air raid in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War" (Bone 1954) has been tacitly contradicted by all reliable sources. However, the emotional devastation over the siege of Barcelona may have begun his downward spiral of health. On 22 February 1938, Llobet died of pleurisy in Barcelona. His complete works, edited by Professor Ron Purcell, were published by Chanterelle Verlag. Chanterelle, now under the ownership of Musicverlag Zimmermann, is in the process of publishing new Urtext editions of the complete catalog under the editorship of Stefano Grondona. These new and more definitive editions are