"TORMÉNTASE EL ALMA"

Año Sabatini (4 performances: 1 and 3 October, 18:00 and 19:45) "Thirty years before Francesco Sabatini settled in Madrid in the service of the monarchs, Domenico Scarlatti led the arrival of a remarkable series of Italian artists and composers who took the initiative to travel from their native land to the peninsula, drawn by the cultural appeal of the Spanish court. Other Italian musicians in the palace circle – apart from better-known figures such as Scarlatti himself and Luigi Boccherini – included Domenico Porretti (first cellist of the Cámara during the reigns of Felipe V, Fernando VI and Carlos III) and Giacomo Facco (first violinist and composer of the Capilla Real of Felipe V). Moreover, the work Sabatini carried out for the royal family, much of it extending and remodelling existing buildings, reflects a practice that also flourished in music in the eighteenth century. Imagining how the rhythmic emphasis of Scarlatti's sonatas might sound on other instruments, beyond the harpsichord or other keyboards, can be a temptation hard to resist, and the ensemble La Tempestad succumbs to it through the transcriptions of its director, the harpsichordist Silvia Márquez. In addition, this concert will bring to light one of the least explored areas of Scarlatti's output – his cantatas – as well as virtually unknown arias by Porretti and Facco. The programme will be completed by the Murcian composer Juan Oliver Astorga, a cosmopolitan and still little-studied musician who worked at several European courts before returning to Spain to join the Real Cámara of Carlos III as a violinist."