SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 8

SOLER: Harpsichord Sonatas, Vol. II

Pieter-Jan Belder's zeal for the rediscovery of 17th-century keyboard music continues apace with this, the third volume in the first-ever projected complete set of the harpsichord sonatas by Padre Antonio Soler, contemporary and rival of Domenico Scarlatti. Like Scarlatti's examples, these sonatas are intensely colorful, alternately exuberant and poetic, and always distinctive. Soler (1729-83) was born in Olot, Catalunia, and became a monk at Escurial where he was organist and composer. A keyboard soloist of prodigious skills, he composed many sonatas for harpsichord (although not one has survived in his hand), organ works a Requiem, piano quintets and concertos for 2 keyboards, and incidental music to plays by Calderon and other 17th century Spanish playwrights. Much research has been carried out to establish accurate performing editions of Soler's music. The editions used in these recordings are by Professor Frederick Marvin who researched the extensive library and archives of Montserrat Monastery, El Escorial and Bibloteca de Catalunia in Barcelona in the 1940s through to the 1960s, and the edition by Padre Samuel Rubio.

Classical Music

Harpsichord virtuosi Jory Vinikour and Philippe LeRoy present this brilliant recording of Antonio Soler’s Baroque masterpiece, Six Concerti for Two Keyboards. Antonio Soler was a music teacher and ordained priest. His engaging solo harpsichord sonatas make up a cornerstone of Baroque keyboard repertoire. These two-instrument wroks, however, have rarely been performed or recorded. Vinikour and LeRoy frequently perform as a duo, and have gained an international following. Vinikour has already made several other well received recordings for Delos.

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 9

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 6

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 5

}Gramophone (1/97, p. 81) "...[Rowland's] selection here is interestingly varied and includes keyboard exuberances such as hand-crossings (Nos. 16 and 90), joyous leaps (No. 101), and imitations of Spanish folk instruments..."{

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 3

A top-quality conclusion to a series which has given some brilliant and idiosyncratic music.

This disc is announced as the final instalment of Gilbert Rowland’s Naxos cycle of the complete Sonatas for Harpsichord by Padre Antonio Soler. I haven’t heard all of the earlier volumes, so I won’t attempt any kind of comprehensive statement about the project as a whole, but my impression, for what it’s worth, is that the series has got better and better as it has gone on. I agree with Patrick Waller (see his review of Volume 12) that the recorded sound has improved in later volumes; it was rather clattery and echoing on some of the early discs, but there are certainly no problems with the sound on this final volume. My sense is also that Gilbert Rowland has come to sound more and more at home with the music, his playing increasingly relaxed, his phrasing more flexible and his range of tonal colours more various. Whether or not these (remembered) impressions are correct, what I can say with some confidence is that this final disc is full of exciting and exhilarating music, played with considerable panache.

Spanish musical traditions are, of course, a central element in Soler’s harpsichord music; traditional Spanish dance rhythms are very clearly audible in the almost seven minutes of the central allegro (marked ‘assai spiritoso’) of Sonata 66, played here with sympathetic (and technically assured) flair; Spanish idioms are also very much to the fore in the opening Cantabile of Sonata 60. At times (as in Sonata 76) the influence of Domenico Scarlatti, Soler’s erstwhile teacher is evident. But Soler clearly listened rather more widely - at times the music prompts one to think of C.P.E. Bach.

Elsewhere, Soler’s fugues would satisfy all but the most pedantically rigorous of Germanic theorists. The fugal third movement of Sonata 66 is a delight, though some of its modulations might perhaps upset that hypothetical pedantic theorist; surely even he (or she?) would find little to complain about in the ‘intento a 4’ which closes Sonata 68, beautifully worked out and technically very accomplished.

But if Soler could be ‘correct’, he could also be somewhat shocking. The allegro in 6/8 of Sonata 60 is full of unexpected leaps and begins with some unconventional harmonies (“almost Bartókian” says Rowland in his characteristically useful booklet notes) that even now retain some of their power to startle.

Rowland responds to the range of this music and, on this disc at any rate, plays it with real innerness. At times here, as on some of the earlier volumes, I wondered whether one or two of the pieces might not work better still on the organ, but that is a quibble which shouldn’t detract from our gratitude to Rowland and to Naxos for the completion of this substantial project. I believe that the only sonatas by Soler which were ever published during the Eighteenth Century were those which appeared as XXVII Sonatas para clave, published around 1796 by Richard Birchall of London. So there is an aptness in the choice of a British (Rowland was born in Glasgow) harpsichordist as the protagonist for this series. In this final disc he plays a two manual instrument by Andrew Wooderson, made in 2005 and modelled on 1750 instrument from the Goermans workshop in Paris – and with its bright (but not excessively so) sound and clear articulation it enables Rowland to do something like full justice to this engaging music.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

Includes sonata(s) for keyboard by Antonio Soler. Soloist: Gilbert Rowland.

Nine more sonatas by the astonishingly prolific Soler – who also wrote, whilst carrying out his monastic duties at the Escorial, at least six concertos for two organs, nine masses, sixty psalm settings, thirteen settings of the Magnificat and much, much else. He also found time to write a treatise on harmony (the Llave de la Modulacion), to develop something of a reputation as a mathematician and a theorist of monetary exchange and to achieve some standing as an authority on the design of organs! One is not surprised to learn, from an obituary written by a fellow monk, that Soler normally slept no more than four hours a night.

Given all this, it is not surprising that Soler’s output is a little uneven. I haven’t heard all ten previous volumes of Gilbert Rowland’s Naxos series, but on some of the ones I have heard this was very marked . In volume 11 the general level is pretty high, most of the sonatas, in their different ways, showing Soler at something like his best.

In many of the sonatas – like much in the music of Scarlatti (with whom Soler studied) and Boccherini – one can hear the influence of the syncopated dance rhythms of Spain. This is true, for example, of the second subject in the C major sonata which opens the present programme (and which has no Rubio number, not being included in Father Samuel Rubio’s great edition) and of sonatas 45 and 51. There are places, too, where some of Soler’s melodic materials sound as though they may be derived from Spanish folk music, as in the first two movements of Sonata 65.

Yet, for all his ‘Spanishness’, Soler can sometimes surprise one by writing in idioms which one wouldn’t readily think of as Spanish. So, for example, the Rondo, marked ‘andantino con moto’, which opens the four-movement Sonata 62 sounds more like a piece of Viennese classicism, like Haydn or Mozart, for example, than anything else – if one heard it played on the fortepiano the resemblance would, I suspect, seem even greater. This is really only to say that Soler is a good deal more various than he has sometimes been thought to be, that he is far more than merely an imitator of Scarlatti. His sonatas in several movements – this CD includes no. 65 in three movements, as well as Sonata 62 – attempt things quite different from the work of his early master, for all the many echoes of Scarlatti.

Gilbert Rowlands has a sure-fingered understanding of Soler’s idioms and a clear-sighted sense of the differences between the sonatas (evident in his useful booklet notes as well as in his performances). I enjoy his playing, except perhaps in some of the louder climaxes, though this may be the fault of a not especially attractive sounding instrument – described as a "Concert Flemish harpsichord from the Paris Workshop, prepared and tuned by Andrew Wooderson". But this is a relatively small blemish on a generally interesting and enjoyable recital.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 10

Antonio Soler is the 17th century’s Spanish composer with the greatest international projection. His fame is due to the celebrated sonatas for harpsichord and his chamber music. However, Soler also produced an extensive oeuvre of vocal music thanks to the more than thirty years he spent at the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, where he was organist and maestro de capilla. This album gathers a carefully selected group of compositions in Latin written for two choruses and instrumental ensemble, some of which have never been recorded. Based on the technical procedures involved in polychoral writing, these works are made up of imposing choral sections- of both homophonic and contrapuntal textures- and sections for soloists with either a cantabile or virtuoso character closer to a theatrical style, all of which shows his mastery throughout an admirable stylistic spectrum. This pioneering initiative reveals the abundant imagination, the vocal writing skill and the ample scope of expressive resources employed by the great Catalan musician.