"TORMÉNTASE EL ALMA"

Music by Domenico Scarlatti, Juan Oliver y Astorga, Giacomo Facco and Domenico Porretti.

"Thirty years before Francesco Sabatini settled in Madrid in the service of the kings, Domenico Scarlatti headed 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 allure of the Spanish court. Other Italian musicians in the palace circle – apart from the better-known figures such as Scarlatti himself and Luigi Boccherini – were Domenico Porretti (principal chamber cellist during the reigns of Felipe V, Fernando VI and Carlos III) and Giacomo Facco (leading violinist and composer of the Royal Chapel of Felipe V). Moreover, the work Sabatini carried out for the royal family, much of it extending and remodelling existing buildings, was a practice that also flourished in the musical sphere in the 18th century. Imagining how the rhythmic emphasis of Scarlatti's sonatas sounds on other instruments, beyond the harpsichord or other keyboards, can be a temptation hard to resist, and the ensemble La Tempestad gives in to it through the transcriptions by its director, the harpsichordist Silvia Márquez. In addition, this concert will rescue one of the least explored areas of Scarlatti's output – his cantatas – as well as practically unknown arias by Porretti and Facco. The programme will be completed by the composer from Murcia Juan Oliver Astorga, a cosmopolitan musician still little studied, who worked at several European courts before returning to Spain to join the Real Cámara of Carlos III as a violinist."