Soler's keyboard sonatas have until now fared badly in the catalogues, at least on the harpsichord, almost nothing so far recorded being really recommendable; so a disc as excellent as this (down to the notes by RG) is all the more welcome. Soler is sometimes casually regarded as a mere shadow of Scarlatti, with whom he was in close contact for five years at the Escorial; but quite apart from the enormous quantity of church music he composed (he was a tireless workaholic, taking only four hours' sleep a night), his sonatas include Italian elements besides Iberian traditions, a number are in several movements, and he defended the freedom of his modulations in a treatise that caused a considerable stir at the time. Some of those modulations are indeed startling, as in Nos. 84, 90 and particularly 117 here; but what emerges still more strongly in the compelling vitality of Virginia Black's performances is the sheer zest of Soler's keyboard writing. Nowhere is this more dazzling than in the wild abandon of No. 10, in which occurs that exciting Scarlattian feature of constant back-and-forth left-hand leaps (as wide as three-and-a-half octaves) across the right hand. The hurtling thirds and the bass octaves of No. 117 also display the physical enjoyment of the true keyboard virtuoso.
Some of Soler's invention, too, is almost the equal of Scarlatti's: the well-known No. 84 in D with its verve and its woodpecker-like repeated notes (which also figure in the brilliant and busy No. 43) could well be mistaken for a piece by his Neapolitan-born senior, and so could the lively leaping No. 21 in C sharp minor. A very curious sonata is No. 81 in G minor (which calls into play the highest treble G), its hectic progress four times interrupted by passages in a quite different mood and rhythm, the second developed into a kind of recitative. (In this sonata Black seems to be following the Marvin edition rather than Rubio's.)
Playing on a beautiful-sounding copy by Andrew Garlick of a Goujon harpsichord, Virginia Black gives intense pleasure not only by her vivacity but by her subtle shaping of phrases in the slower sonatas, with flexibility never in danger of becoming shapeless. A delightful disc; and please, Miss Black, there are over 100 more Soler sonatas still unrecorded …'