Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is Soler severely underrated and underperformed?

Soler seems to be a mere footnote compared to Scarlatti. In a YT search on Soler, only a handful of well known pianists seemed to have recorded his works. Soler is also very seldom performed in recital. I don't have to search on Scarlatti to know that his sonatas have been recorded and played in concert by countless pianists.

I have not listened to many Soler Sonatas but the small number I've listened to seem to be more or less on the same level as Scarlatti i.e. terrific. So I'm interested in your opinions about Soler. Why do you think his music is so seldom performed? Is he on the same level or close to the same level as Scarlatti?

Here is a sampling of Soler Sonatas played by Grinburg, de Larrocha, and Attwood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3dbrLjbEM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLy1oVLsH_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AnilQtJUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1FDkMqg9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdaoaT--vl0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7CYQuKy8Ys

I think there is so much Scarlatti that people simply don't get around to Soler.

And a really good edition of Soler (i. e. Henle) is relatively recent.

(Maria Grinberg's playing wasn't familiar to me, and is quite [in the good sense 😀] a discovery.)

Scarlatti can be very interesting in his treatment of binary form as a precursor to classic period (1st mvt.) sonata form. So, one would really need to comparatively study Soler in that regard to make evaluations.

The preface of the Henle's Soler collection is very interesting. http://www.henleusa.com/media/foreword/0475.pdf

Along the same lines, Domenico Cimarosa was a successful opera composer who also wrote 88 outstanding single-movement sonatas for harpsichord - written at the bitter end of the harpsichord's relevance around 1799-1800, in a distinctly conservative style, at a time when Beethoven was already fully committed to stretching the limits of the piano. A real historical oddity but very attractive music.

it's funny that the piano didn't catch on so much with italians, spanish and portuguese as it did with germans and british early on

During my time at Louisville, a couple students played a couple Soler sonatas alongside a couple Scarlatti sonatas in their degree recitals. I've never played one, but they are wonderful works, deserving to be played like Scarlatti's.

Soler was pretty much unknown until Joaquin Nin published his collection of Spanish baroque sonatas in the 1920s. Soler was represented more than any other composer in that collection.

His sonatas are not technically as demanding as Scarlatti's, but they become more complex in form. There are multiple movement sonatas, for instance. So he is more transitional, as one might expect of a younger composer.

One should not miss his Concertos for Two Organs (or other keyboard instruments). There are also quintets for keyboard and string quartet, which are among the earliest music for that combination.

I heard a concert of his sonatas played by Joaquin Nin's son, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, years ago. I must be one of a very few people who is more familiar with the work of the son than the work of the daughter.

Might it not have something to do with the fact that the Germans and the British were among the first to get into piano manufacturing, the Italian Cristofori's alleged invention of the instrument notwithstanding.

Regards,

Actually, the Spanish were among the first to adopt the piano, but they were not able to maintain them, so their early pianos were turned into harpsichords.

Thanks for linking these! I've always wanted to explore Soler's sonatas, but I've only before ever heard the sonata in F-sharp.

May favorite work by Soler (though it's probably not by him) is actually the Fandango. It's very different from the sonatas (partly why it's thought that it's probably ont his), but it's so exciting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYv32iVSajk

Thank you for sharing these. I have a lot of listening to do!