That’s what Alejandro Marías is dedicated to. To recover and create beauty. More than ten years ago, in 2009, the cellist and viola player founded the ensemble The Spagnawhich takes its name from one of the most famous melodies of the Renaissance. His intention was to bring together some of the best historicist musicians to form a chamber group specialized not only in Baroque music, but also in the musical repertoire that spans from the Renaissance to early Romanticism.
Marías, professor of viola da gamba at the Conservatory of Music of Seville, has since maintained this project that mixes historicist music with research and is now publishing his seventh album, a monograph on the figure of Carl Friedrich AbelGerman composer and viola da gamba virtuoso in the 18th century. His music, Marías assures, marks the passage from Baroque to Clacicism and that is exactly what this recording seeks: to show its breadth and modernity.
The album is titled ‘Abel: Between Two Worlds’ (Brilliant Classics). Abel lived between the viola da gamba and the cello, between the Baroque and Classicism, between the Old and the New Regime. His symphonies laid the foundation for Classicism, to the point that he is the true composer of the misnamed Symphony No. 3 by WA Mozart, since for a long time its authorship was attributed to Mozart and not to Abel, as he has explained. Alejandro Marías himself to illustrate why the recovery of this music perseveres in the search for beauty.
The album, recorded in Madrid in October 2022, features the participation of soprano Jone Martínez and flutist Rafael Ruibérreiz de Torres, who already worked with La Spagna on the recording of ‘Las Siete Palabras’, by Haydn, in the version of Barbieri and in the Boccherini quintets for flute and string quartet. Harpsichord player Jordan Fumadó also participates, with whom Alejandro Marías recorded Bach’s sonatas as a duet. This recording brings to light unpublished scores such as the ‘Concerto Flauto Traverso Concertato in E minor’ and the ‘Concerto a Cembalo obbligato in D major’.
#Insist #beauty
