Juan María Solare Releases 'Minute Minuets' Album

For months, pianist Juan María Solare has been recording and releasing minuet after minuet in batches. A complete plan was devised from the outset, driven by numerological habits and a desire for cohesion, resulting in the album "Minute Minuets" (a playful title suggesting both "tiny minuets" and "minuets of one minute" - which explains the clock in the artwork).

The minuet is a unique genre. Often associated with a certain frivolity (and not always unjustly), it has nonetheless overcome the sadism of time. It remains one of the few ancient musical forms still relatively alive today; indeed, a neoclassical composer is more likely to write a minuet than a gavotte.

This collection spans from the Baroque to modern times - and back again. The structure is chronologically symmetrical, circular. This symmetry is reflected, for example, in the mirrored placement of the minuets by both Mozarts (father and son), as well as those by Bartók and German composers.

The concluding piece, "Minuet - Affettuoso" by Lodovico Giustini, fittingly brings this journey full circle: it is the first composition in history explicitly written for the pianoforte. In this sense, "Minute Minuets" offers a condensed history of music through the lens of the minuet.

Every symmetry implies a center, and this provided the ideal place to position an original minuet composed by the pianist. The title "Menuet de minuit" (Midnight Minuet) adds another wordplay, this time in French-a phonetic wink.

The album "Minute Minuets" includes music by Bach, Telemann, Händel, Krieger, Böhm, Rameau, Lully, Giustini, Purcell; by both Mozarts (father and son); by Beethoven, Schubert; by Bartók, Shostakovich, and Ravel; by three Latin American classical composers (the Argentine Amancio Alcorta, the Brazilian Alberto Nepomuceno, and the Peruvian Pedro Ximénez Abril Tirado); and a minuet by Juan María himself.

"Minute Minuets" consists of 23 tracks-a nod to the artist's fondness for prime numbers-and was released on March 7, 2025, precisely on the 150th birthday of Maurice Ravel, as a heartfelt homage. This was clearly no coincidence but an integral part of the concept.