In ‘A piacere’ Fahmi Alqhai demonstrates once again what an expressive musician he has become, and with the viola da gamba as his “Wondrous Muse”, he recreates for CD a concert programme which he has been touring and refining over recent years. Following his ensemble album ‘Rediscovering Spain’ (performed with Accademia del Piacere) this new release from Glossa has a distinctively soloistic feel and approach to it, with Alqhai relishing the different moods and musical directions that his chosen musical “voice” permits him to take. Considering the instrument as so much more than a relic from the decaying aristocratic age of Louis XV in France, Alqhai demonstrates – by his choice of programme and his playing – the viol’s versatility, flexibility and depth of emotional response: music from Spanish, German and French Baroque masters of the instrument are joined by Alqhai’s own version of Joe Satriani’s ‘Always with me, always with you’ rock number. Notably in his Satriani adaptation (but also in an old Spanish popular melody featuring the cantaor Arcángel, as well as elsewhere) Alqhai receives support from musician friends gathered at sessions in Seville, all helping to create – in marvellous sound – a new demonstration of the creative freedom that old music can allow in the right hands.

“… the viola da gamba is the perfect vehicle for the musical tapestry of Fahmi Alqhai’’s extraordinary disc. Although along with his group Accademia del Piacere, he specialises in music of the Italian Seicento, what he does with the hybrid pieces on this disc – combining that core repertoire with flamenco and elements that reflect his Syrian-Palestinian-Spanish heritage- brings the instrument into a new realm of joyful potential… Les pleurs, the baseline of gamba repertoire, is as accomplished a performance as you could expect …” –Caroline Gill, Gramophone