JOSEP SOLER (b.1935): Meditació, Paisaje nocturnos VII & VIII, Escenes de Via Crucis, Sans soleil, Piano Sonata No. 11 for the Left Hand.
Catalogue Number: 10O078
Label: La Ma de Guido
Reference: 2111
Format: CD
Price: $17.98
Description: Imagine a post-nuclear catastrophe landscape with broken buildings, skeletal tree remains, a dark gray, fallout-colored sky, shambling figures creeping through the ruins, shuffling, dumbstruck, emotional range from the remembrance of anger to numbed shock; and you'll have the soundtrack for that image in these mostly late works (1995 and later except for the slow, still, meditative Meditació from 1933 which surely points the way toward the later pieces) from this Catalan composer. Yes, they're atonal and dodecaphonic (but not Darmstadtian; think of Berg on quaaludes...) but in their affinity with a frozen nocturnal landscape, desolate, the music tending toward immobility with brief molten eruptions which provide a comparison to late Scriabin, they are also strongly, personally expressive. Miguel Álvarez-Argudo (piano).