Accordion

Baroque powerhouse Domenico Scarlatti – son of the great Alessandro Scarlatti and born in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Friderich Handel – wrote an enormous 555 keyboard sonatas. These were mostly to be performed on the harpsichord, although several sources suggest that he may have also written some for the fortepiano at the Spanish court, where he was employed from 1733. The universal appeal of these sonatas – containing Scarlatti’s trademark influence of Iberian folk music and dances – is such that they have been pushed beyond the boundaries of the intended instrument, and thus the recording also boasts performances of selected sonatas on the harp and accordion, bringing these wonderful sonatas into the 21st century.

This album is a monographic documentation of the output of one of the world’s greatest composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The works presented on the album were created in close cooperation of composer Marcin Błażewicz (born 1953) with an excellent Polish duo, co-created by Karolina Mikołajczyk (violin) and Iwo Jedynecki (accordion). Both the Sonata for Violin and Accordion and the Double Concerto for Violin, Accordion and Orchestra are saturated with extraordinary emotionality and dramaturgy as well as with the expression and structure of sonic tensions typical of the composer’s style. The presented album is also the first containing works of Marcin Błażewicz, released a few months after the composer’s death.