As a guide to the music of Luigi Boccherini written in Spain there is no one better today than Emilio Moreno; this string player, director...

As a guide to the music of Luigi Boccherini written in Spain there is no one better today than Emilio Moreno; this string player, director and scholar knows in a profound way how music composed across the map of 18th century Europe can live and breathe. For a new GLOSSA release Moreno is once again focusing on an important aspect of Boccherini's output from the more than 35 years he spent working within that late 18th century Spanish mixture of a severe tradition, a vibrant popular culture and an openness to culture trends coursing throughout the Europe of Haydn and Mozart. Joined by the talent of Dutch keyboard player Arthur Schoonderwoerd, Moreno leads La Real Cámara (with regular partners violist Antonio Clares and cellist Mercedes Ruiz) in six piano quartets transcribed from Boccherini's Op 26 two-movement quartettini of 1778, and published some years later. Moreno takes us back to the Age of Enlightenment, to the cultured court of the Infante Don Luis de Borbón (the brother of the Spanish king) in Arenas de San Pedro - a royal residence outside Madrid but also near Ávila, and clearly within the scope of the European postal service - and to those substantial demands for chamber music of all confi gurations which the Font family quartet and Boccherini (a noted cellist himself) were adept at performing with technical assurance and artistry. Here, fortepiano joins violin, viola and basse obligé coming together in elegant, witty and graceful chamber music, in scores touched by those popular Spanish motifs cheerfully incorporated by Boccherini.