Search - Antonio Soler, Anna Malikova :: Antonio Soler: Piano Sonatas

Soler keyboard sonatas: Witty, quirky, pensive, elegant

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 02/23/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In this CD performance, Russian pianist Anna Mallikova plays 19 different keyboard sonatas by Antonio Soler. Soler was a younger contemporary of the famous virtuoso, pedagogue, and composer of the Spanish court, Domenico Scarlatti. If you like the Scarlatti one-movement keyboard sonatas, then you will almost certainly enjoy hearing the Soler sonatas which are also one movement. Though small in scale compared to what the piano sonata would later become, each Soler essay is a true gem. Harmonies are quirky and remind us that the Baroque era could yield some strange byways, like the mystery sonatas of Biber, the recently rediscovered operas of Reinhard Keiser, and of course Domenico Scarlatti's pungent, effervescent fantasies. Soler's genius is that he followed his own Spanish muse - charged with glimpses into that sort of Slavic soul that must have adorned the courts of the ancient Moorish Caliphate, as did Scarlatti before him, and an intangible something of this fautless individuality comes through vividly in these performances. At times a slight harmonic turn is so striking that it sounds just for a few seconds as if the ghost of Scriabin were already waiting in the wings of the Baroque, helping desire and imagination to hint at forms and moods that would only become overt three hundred years later in the keyboard literatures.



Anna Mallikova studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky conservatory, then taught there after she graduated, then came to wider European attention when she won first prize in the 1993 ARD Munich competition, the first winner to be declared in twelve years of juries. She immerses herself and us in this odd and little known music, leaving a lasting effect of highly personal musical genius that is all out of proportion to how marginal the Soler sonatas really are in most performer's repertoires. Anna Mallikova has also recorded Chopin, Schubert, and Saint-Saens - to good effect. Her varied touch wrings puckish magick from the modern concert grand piano. These works are worth any time you can spare, apart from the seething but empty business of a modern crowded daybook. Highly recommended."