Josep Galles (1758-1836)
Sonate pour clavecin n° 1 en si bémol
Sonate pour clavecin n° 2 en si bémol
Sonate pour clavecin n° 3 en do mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 4 en fa mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 6 en la mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 7 en si mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 8 en sol mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 9 en do mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 11 en mi mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 12 en ré mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 15 en mi mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 16 en fa mineur
Sonate pour clavecin n° 17 en do mineur

Michele Benuzzi, clavecin

Anyone enthralled by the quixotic imagination of Domenico Scarlatti, as exhibited by his 555 keyboard sonatas, will want to hear these examples of the work by his almost unknown contemporary, Josep Gallés. Biographical details are thin on the ground: he was born in Castellterçol in 1758 and at some point of his life became Maestro di cappella in the Cathedral of Vic near Barcelona, where he died in 1836. Little of his own music survives: just 23 keyboard Sonatas and some versos for organ. In Scarlattian style, the sonatas are singlemovement works in two parts except for No.4 in F minor which has a beautiful slow introduction. Gallés also employed many of the folkloristic tropes of Spanish music such as guitar-like arpeggios, alternations of major and minor, exotic scales, dance rhythms, use of syncopations and crossed hands. He was also partial to extravagant modulations and enharmonic movement between distant keys, a trait which the opening sonata of the collection seems designed to exhibit. Listening through the collection, it is possible to hear the chronological movement from Baroque to Classical style just as Gallés himself lived and worked through the transition (as it now seems to us). Michele Benuzzi has made several wellreceived albums for Brilliant Classics of unfamiliar names from the period, including Christoph Nichelmann (BC94809) and Hans Leo Hässler. In recording the music of Gallés, as he remarks in his own booklet note, he particularly appreciates the expressivity of a style which is marked out from the superficiality of most of his contemporaries: his neglect hitherto seems all the more surprising, and worth correcting.