30th June 2012
Music of Spain

7:30pm, St Nicholas with St Mary Magdalene (St Nick's), Church Street, Chiswick, London, W4 2PH

Solo pianist – Kentaro Nagai

This programme combines music of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque with music from the more familiar 20th century.   Kentaro Nagai, a recent post graduate student from the Royal College of Music, built himself a reputation as an enthusiastic exponent of Spanish keyboard repertoire.  This summer’s concert is built around that enthusiasm.  Motets by Spain’s greatest polyphonic composer, Tomas Luis de Victoria, a Magnificat a 8 by Antonio Soler are combined in the first part of the programme with sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (Italian living in Spain for 30 years) and Soler.    The second part of the evening gives us pieces from the piano suite Goyescas by Granados with a performance of a recently re-discovered rarity – Cant de les Estrelles (Song of the Stars).   Written for the unusual combination of solo piano, organ and chorus, Granados composed this in 1911 and performed the solo part at the highly successful premiere.  However, the Cant de les Estrelles remained unpublished and  nothing further was heard of the work until the manuscript was re-discovered by David Riva who arranged for its publication and performed it in 2007, 96 years after its premiere.