Albero: Six Recercatas; Fugas and Sonatas

Casal, Alejandro

95187

If the name of Sebastian de Albero (or to give him his full title, Sebastián Ramón de Albero Añanos) is encountered at all in the record catalogues, it is for the 30 brief keyboard sonatas, which are stylish and exuberant works in the early 18th-century Spanish style perfected by Domenico Scarlatti, with whom de Albero was likely acquainted while in post as the main organist at the Royal Chapel in Madrid, to which he had been appointed in 1746 at just 24 years of age. He died just ten years later, leaving to posterity only those sonatas and this more individual collection of tripartite works combining the forms of recercar, fugue and sonata. These have received much less attention on disc, making this complete recording by the Spanish harpsichordist Alejandro Casal all the more welcome. In his own detailed booklet note, Casal homes in on the collection’s most extraordinary feature, which is the length of the fugues, up to 522 bars for the A major fugue (almost ten minutes in performance; in terms of duration, three others are even longer, up to thirteen minutes); compare this to Bach’s longest keyboard fugue, of 231 bars.

CD x 2

Muzyka klasyczna

Brilliant Classics

13-11-2019

5028421951874