Pablo Bruna

Under the expert fingers of Jean-Charles Ablitzer, the Iberian organ of Grandvillars, confirms its extraordinary expressive, spatial and sonorous qualities. The thought of the interpreter resuscitates the whole imagination of the organist composers in Spain: the colors shine; fluid and precise, the game emphasizes this aesthetic contrasts very sharp, biting, conducive to the event of the orchestral organ, able to move as to seize by the force of its spatialized spectrum.

Lovers of the Spanish Baroque may be surprised to see the subtitle "17th-century violin music in Spain" here, inasmuch as non-keyboard instrumental chamber music following Italian models has never surfaced before. Indeed, the booklet transmits statements by writers of the time bemoaning the lack of such violin music. What's happening here is that Spanish historical-instrument group La Real Cámara and its director-violinist Emilio Moreno have hypothesized that Spanish organ music might have been arranged for other instruments in the same way Italian music certainly was; Girolamo Frescobaldi specifically attested to this.

Spanish and Portuguese organs are celebrated for their excellent trumpets (en chamade), but their splendid flutes, prestants, cornets, and reeds are less widely known. From the second half of the 17th century, organists in Spain and Portugal delighted in recreating the sounds of the battlefield on their instruments. The batalha has a simple harmonic structure; its interest lies principally in the stirring rhythm.