Given the relative obscurity of his music - he merits only a brief
paragraph in the latest edition of Grove - Manuel Blasco de Nebra
has received a surprising amount of attention from keyboard players
and recording companies in the last few years.
Blasco de Nebra was born, and died, in Seville. His family was
well established in Spanish musical life; his father, for example,
was made organist of Seville Cathedral in 1735 and his uncle José
Nebra (1702-1768), was a Madrid-based composer and organist whose
pupils included Antonio Soler. He soon acquired a considerable
contemporary reputation as a performer on the organ and the harpsichord,
as well as on the developing piano. He was also said to have remarkable
abilities as a sight-reader of complex scores. In 1768 he was
made assistant organist to his father and in 1778 he was created
titular organist at the Cathedral. There seems to be no available
information as to the cause of his early death. Until relatively
recently only a few compositions were known, but recent decades
have seen the rediscovery of more works in Spanish monastic libraries.
There may be more yet to be found.
Listening to Blasco de Nebra’s work one hears affinities with
Scarlatti and with Soler, but also with non-Spanish influences
such as C.P.E. Bach. He makes fair demands of the performer and
his rhythmic inventiveness is often surprising and captivating.
The evocative (but not very informative) booklet notes by a contemporary
composer of Seville, José Luís Greco, speak of Blasco de Nebra’s
in terms such as “elegance … tenderness, sweetness, fantasy and
languor”. That seems about right. This is quirky, individual music
- for all the affinities mentioned above - represented here by
six one-movement sonatas, and a set of six ‘pastorelas’, each
in three movements and each made up of an adagio, a pastorela
and a closing minuet.
In 2002 the excellent Carole Cerasi recorded (Metronome CD 1064)
a selection of Blasco de Nebra’s sonatas and pastorelas, playing
some pieces on a harpsichord of 1785 by Joachim Jozé Antunes and
others on a 1793 piano by Sebastian Lengerer. Though there is
much to enjoy on the disc - including the sound-world of the harpsichord
she uses - I’m not sure that Cerasi consistently captures the
poetry of Blasco de Nebra’s music, and she isn’t all that well
served by a sound quality that might be more vivid. It is, though,
good to hear this music on something like the instruments which
the composer must have had in mind. Naxos has issued two volumes
(8.572068 and 8.572069) of
Pedro Casals’s recording of
the
Complete Keyboard Sonatas; the third and final
disc is due to be issued in January 2010. Casals plays a modern
piano, as does Pedro Piquero on this Columna Música issue – which
also appears to be the first volume of a complete set. Both Casals
and Piquero play with a sure-footed and sure-fingered understanding
of the idiom; both temper the resources of the modern piano in
ways that are appropriate to the music. If anything Piquero seems
to have, very slightly, the edge in responsiveness, in the articulation
of the rapidly changing moods of the music. But both are very
well worth hearing - as, for the reasons suggested above, is Cerasi’s
disc. If you want only one CD of Blasco de Nebra’s music, then
this is probably the one to get – since it contains six of the
composer’s delightful pastorelas - which contain some of his loveliest
inventions - while Casals limits himself to the sonatas.
I cannot resist quoting some sentences from the booklet notes
by José Luís Greco: “I have no idea as to the cause of Manuel
Blasco de Nebra’s untimely death. I could well imagine that, at
his very last, he fancied himself swooning, mesmerised by the
lazy flow of the Guadalquivir, dreaming of a music whose tenderness
caressed his soul like a tear caresses the cheek, and with the
weightlessness of a feather falling onto water, he became one
with his reflection rocked by the gentle waves”. Such writing
may not be the norm in these musicologically correct days, but
one can well understand how the beauty and expressiveness of Blasco
de Nebra’s keyboard writing might prompt it.
Glyn Pursglove
Pedro Piquero (piano) 
