Antonio Soler enjoyed high prestige at Spain's royal palace, the Escorial, where his contributions to keyboard technique, harmonic innovation and his Spanish musical identity served to bridge the stylistic gap between the late Baroque and early Classicism. Soler's innovations have often been overlooked but the intricate modulations and rhythmic vitality found in his sonatas offer compelling evidence of their importance. Sonatas Nos. 99-111 offer a wealth of entrancing features, which include sophisticated ornamentation, a synthesis of contrapuntal and Iberian folkloric traditions, and humorous cadences.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

...Like [Joaquim] Homs, [Josep Soler (b. 1935)] also is influenced by composers of the Second Viennese School, but also by the music of Bach, Palestrina, and other musicians of those eras. This is readily apparent in the Partita (1980); the titles of the eight movements (Sarabande, Allemande, and so on) refer to models offered by Bach, but the music itself speaks in a modern tongue. Soler's expertise in counterpoint (he wrote a text on the subject in the same year that he wrote the Partita) is apparent. A three-minute Sonata Fragment from the late 1950s is Bergian to the point of homage. "The Song of God," a sonata from 1993, is almost eccentrically individual. Speaking of eccentricity, I note that the annotations claim that this music exemplifies "a process of natural stylization, in which we can observe the disappearance of all tendency towards exasperation, or violence toward the materials employed, and the renunciation of any hint of avant-gardism, leaving only the distillation of what is most deeply inherent to it: its very essence." I haven't the faintest idea what that all means, but somehow it seems to describe Soler's music to a tee. My comments concerning the approachability and integrity of Horns's compositions need to be applied even more strongly here.

In the absence of a score or a performance tradition I can refer to, it seems to me that Masó's pianism exceeds the music's technical and intellectual challenges (this also was Story's impression in the aforementioned review). He is recording all of Gerhard's music for Marco Polo, and the complete piano music of Mompou for Naxos (another worthy project), so it appears that this repertoire is his bread and butter (or should I say pan y mantequillal). The engineering is not completely successful in coping with the challenges of recording the piano, but it is good enough.

If you're looking for piano music that's as free of gimmicks as it is full of challenges, then one or both of these discs should satisfy you.

-- Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE [9/1999]

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 7

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 2

"Cedille continues to delight me with the quality of its engineering and production. The latest release--again demonstrating the recording-booth talents of Bill Maylone--is Soler's Quintets for Harpsichord and Strings . . . Schrader plays a large harpsichord, resonant and full-voiced. The recording seems perfectly balanced between small-room acoustics . . . and large-ensemble spaciousness." (Fanfare)

Padre Antonio Soler's six quintets for harpsichord and string quartet are post-Baroque masterstrokes, blending Baroque and early Classical styles with a savory seasoning of Spanish folk music.

"In terms of crowd-pleasing qualities, the last three quintets of Soler may even eclipse their predecessors," says record producer James Ginsburg. "Yet they also reward the serious listener."

While formally less diverse than the first three quintets, the latter three are especially lyrical and offer a stimulating variety of moods and timbres which -- at least in the hands of the present performers -- evoke the sound of woodwinds, chimes, harp, and even Spanish guitar.