Improvisation concert at Fundación Juan March, Madrid

On the 26h of April I had the pleasure to play a recital in the concert series “Improvisando” of the Fundación Juan March in Madrid.

Together with Johannes Keller I created a programme similar to the improvisation concert we played at the Oude Muziek Festival Utrecht 2021. It is a combination of composed music (either harpsichord solo pieces or diminutions on madrigals) which we partly played as written and partly arranged and extended with improvised parts, and improvisations on grounds, songs and polyphonic music.

This time, for example, we added a modified version of the "Cento Partite” by Frescobaldi. This work is rather a catalogue of all possible ways to vary on the passacaglia, showing how the most straightforward ostinato can become incredibly complicated, than a piece to play in its entirety. We created an own version of this by using its structure and its most important components, playing some passages in their original setting while reducing other parts to grounds for me to improvise on.

The concert was received very well by the audience and also got a very positive review in Scherzo: “The performers were full of imagination, with exceptional skills and a joy in interpretation, with the freedom that comes from a profound knowledge of the music, which they managed to transmit to the audience. It was certainly a demanding and risky project, but they came out of it successfully most of the time, with a solid improvisatory technique and excellent interpretations.”

Full review in Spanish here.

The concert was live broadcasted on the radio and there was a live video stream on the internet.