Est 1923

Soler Variaciones del Fandango espagnol

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Andreas Staier, Sebastiàn de Albero, Antonio (Francisco Javier José) Soler (Ramos), Félix Máximo López, José Ferrer, José Gallès, Luigi Boccherini

Label: Teldec (Warner Classics)

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 65

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: 3984-21468-2

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Adagio José Ferrer, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
José Ferrer, Composer
Andantino José Ferrer, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
José Ferrer, Composer
Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 9 in C minor José Gallès, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
José Gallès, Composer
Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 16 in F minor José Gallès, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
José Gallès, Composer
Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 17 in C minor José Gallès, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
José Gallès, Composer
Variaciones del Fandango español Félix Máximo López, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
Félix Máximo López, Composer
Recercata, Fuga y Sonata Sebastiàn de Albero, Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
Sebastiàn de Albero, Composer
Fandango Antonio (Francisco Javier José) Soler (Ramos), Composer
Andreas Staier, Composer
Antonio (Francisco Javier José) Soler (Ramos), Composer
Guitar Quintets, Movement: D Luigi Boccherini, Composer
Adela Gonzáles Cámpa, Castanets
Andreas Staier, Composer
Christine Schornsheim, Harpsichord
Luigi Boccherini, Composer
The fandangos most familiar to today’s music-lovers are probably the Miller’s Wife’s dance in The Three-Cornered Hat and those in Granados’s Goyescas and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol; but the heyday of the dance was in the eighteenth century (Mozart introduced a form of it in Figaro, following Gluck’s Don Juan). It was danced by a single couple who did not touch but whose movements were highly erotic; and there were several local varieties of it, including the malaguena, the granadina, the rondena and the murciana. Only a few months ago Chandos issued a disc by Sophie Yates entitled ‘Fandango’ (2/99): like her, Andreas Staier does not, despite the disc’s title, confine himself to the fandango rhythm or to the key of D minor which was so prevalent for it. He kicks off with stunning virtuosity with Soler’s famous piece (if it really was by him), with its exciting build-up and fearsome hand-crossings. After the initial tiento (which he pulls about with violent changes of speed), he tears at a most un-fandango-like breakneck pace into the dance, whirling breathlessly to the end and employing a free range of registrations on his German-type instrument. Unlike Yates, however, he does not make the mistakes of spoiling the cumulative effect by rubatos and changes of speed or tacking on a reprise which wrongly ends the work on the tonic instead of the dominant. He adopts the same fast pace for the very similar but shorter variations on the fandango by Lopez (which he discovered), who was an organist in the royal chapel in Madrid under Charles III and IV. It is a distinct relief to find a more authentic speed adopted in a free arrangement for two harpsichords of a fandango from a Boccherini quintet, which is enlivened by (obbligato) castanets.
When reviewing the Yates disc already mentioned, I pleaded for someone to record for the first time Albero’s recercatas and gigantic fugues. Staier has obliged, and the two examples he has chosen are every bit as astonishing in their chromaticisms and eccentric key-shifts as Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue – in fact, more outlandish. The recercatas resemble the older lute preludes non-mesures; the lively sprawling fugues (that in D minor a gigue) call forth brilliantly virtuosic playing and splendidly rhythmic stamina; and each work closes with a binary sonata movement which contains Scarlattian chordal scrunches. Of the other non-fandango works here, the most interesting is an F minor Sonata by Josep Galles, a Catalan whose other sonatas disclose a somewhat disorganized musical mind.'

Soler Variaciones del Fandango espagnol

Adagio

Andantino

Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 9 in C minor

Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 16 in F minor

Keyboard Sonatas, Movement: No. 17 in C minor

Variaciones del Fandango español

Recercata, Fuga y Sonata

Fandango

Guitar Quintets, Movement: D

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