In the first phase of the composer's career, his music for solo piano is represented by a relatively limited number of significant pieces. In contrast,...

In the first phase of the composer's career, his music for solo piano is represented by a relatively limited number of significant pieces. In contrast, one of the more obvious characteristics of recent works of Casablancas is the impressive quantity of piano compositions offered, as shown by the dates when pieces in the present catalogue were written. The maturity which characterizes his musical language has enabled him to achieve results influenced by the instrument's great literature but with an increasing virtuosity in the writing and extraordinary richness of textural detail in both harmonic and polyphonic elements, subject always to the piano's sonorities and natural dynamics as the final criteria of musical structure. The selection offered here brings together almost all the piano works of Benet Casablancas, it's earliest contribution being Preludi I Fuga En Do (Prelude and Fugue in C). This provides an interesting introduction to his work by presenting a very early piece which, despite the fact that it is enormously different from the composer's mature style, demonstrates in it's firm contrapuntal writing, his search for structural integrity and a concern for craftsmanship. How the musical personality of Casablancas would develop is perhaps revealed more clearly in the mild disquiet of the quasi-expressionistic Prelude rather than in the Fugue's neoclassicism (written somewhat in the style of Hindemith). But this study in polyphony already gives us insight into a young composer setting himself unusually high standards in the service of his profession.