That fine Australian
poet Peter Porter, resident in London
for more than fifty years, is the
author of many outstanding poems
on musical subjects – poems such
as ‘St Cecilia’s Day, 1710, in Memory
of W.F. Bach’ and ‘Schumann Sings
Schubert’, to name but two. In a
fairly recent collection – Max
is Missing (Picador, 2001) –
he includes the poem ‘Antonio Soler’s
Fingertips’. The poem is a dramatic
monologue of sorts. Porter’s Soler
talks of himself as a kind of "Keyboard
Penelope":
Keyboard Penelope, I spin
through gloom
Of the Escorial such notes,
each tune
A fresh-cut flower in an
airless room.
There’s a fine evocation of some
of the music’s associations and
seeming images:
Into the minor then – mad
kings appear
Beside their tombs: listen
and you’ll hear
The roads of Spain, the
mule and his muleteer,
Whispering Italians with
their loud fiati,
Fresco-painters hoping for
contratti,
The immortality of dead
Scarlatti.
The poem ends with a kind of confessio
from the composer:
I play all night and pray
by rote at Prime.
Christ on the Cross made
blood and water rhyme.
Up Calvary my harpsichord
must climb.
Porter’s Soler
prays by rote; the Jeronymite monk
has perhaps put his faith in his
music or, at any rate, his religious
duties have taken second place to
it. Quite what was true of the historical
Soler is very hard to know. Outside
the music itself it is hard to get
an idea of the man’s personality.
Contemporary or near contemporary
comments on him have about them
the air of the conventional, praising
him for the virtues he was expected
to have perhaps, rather than for
what he really was. An obituary
written by one of his fellow monks
(on the day Soler died) praises
him for his religious devotion and
his compassion – but could hardly
be expected to say anything else,
after all. Soler, one suspects,
did not want to reveal much of himself.
From June 1765 he entered into correspondence
with the great Padre Giovanni Battista
Martini in Bologna, teacher, music
historian, composer and collector;
he sent scores and books to Martini;
he asked for his advice and opinions;
but he refused to send a portrait
for Martini’s collection of composer
portraits (some of which can now
be seen in the fascinating Museo
internazionale e biblioteca della
musica in Bologna). So far as I
know, no authenticated portrait
of Soler survives. It is to the
music itself that we must turn,
as Porter did, if we want an ‘image’
of Soler; and the image which that
music encourages doesn’t perhaps
sit easily with conventional ideas
of a Jeronymite monk, committed
to a particularly austere lifestyle.
There is paradox and mystery in
much of Soler’s music, and Pieter
Belder communicates more than a
little of such matters in these
performances, the first two CDs
of a projected complete set of the
sonatas.
Naxos have not
long finished issuing Gilbert Rowland’s
generally reliable recording of
the sonatas. At first encounter,
and having only these two CDs to
go on, Belder tackles the music
with more passion, more fire, than
Rowland often does. And, unlike
some of the earlier volumes in the
Naxos series, the recorded sound
here is good and bright without
excess. Rowland sounds just a little
straight-laced when one makes direct
comparisons of particular sonatas.
I am glad to have a number of the
CDs by Rowland on my shelves, but
someone only now setting out to
build a Soler collection would probably
be best advised to go with Belder
(assuming that later sets are as
good as this first one). It is,
though, worth saying that Rowland’s
set has the advantage of better
notes – by the soloist himself.
Belder has undertaken
more than a few ‘completes’ for
Brilliant (not least his Scarlatti
recordings) both as a solo harpsichordist
and as the leader and director of
Musica Amphion. Most of these have
been of consistently high quality.
Just occasionally in the extensive
Scarlatti series one sensed an air
of the routine, of the necessary
recording of a sonata which didn’t
perhaps interest or excite Belder
greatly – the problem that faces
any ‘completist’. But on these first
two discs of Soler there is absolutely
no sense of the routine, Belder
seeming thoroughly engaged with
every note that he plays.
The tone is set
by a blistering performance of the
450 bars of Soler’s Fandango (if
it is his?), the ostinato
bass worked up vivaciously, the
rhythms incisive, the phrasing packed
with energy. In all that follows
Belder captures the spirit of the
music in very convincing fashion,
whether that be in the Largo cantabile
of No.110 or the Prestissimo of
No.81, the syncopations here being
particularly effective.
Belder uses two
instruments. On the first CD (from
the Fandango to Sonnet 116, inclusive)
he plays a 1999 copy by Cornelius
Bom of a Ruckers instrument; on
the second CD he plays a 2003 copy
by Bom of an original by Giusti.
Both instruments are impressive,
that based on the model provided
by the Luccan-born maker Giusti
perhaps having the edge in delicacy
and intimacy of sound, that copied
from Ruckers packing the slightly
greater punch.
Throughout Belder
does full justice to the exuberance
of Soler’s work as well as to its
moments of sudden depth, there being
abundant light and shade here. Like
any good Spanish church of the period,
Soler’s work has its equivalents
both of rosy coloured cherubic angels
and of saints lost to the world
in meditation. And, for that matter,
the odd mad king or muleteer. This
first instalment makes one eager
for later volumes in the series.
Glyn Pursglove
Pieter-Jan Belder (harpsichord) 
