Domenico Scarlatti Complete Sonatas Brilliant Classics 36cd

‘A strange but wonderful album’: one of the accolades for Andrea Molteni’s debut album on Piano Classics, of the piano works by his countrymen Dallapiccola and Petrassi (PCL10222). For a sequel, he turns to the endlessly inventive store of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, who drew on his own extraordinary abilities at the keyboard to produce the illusion of written improvisations within a basic two-part form which left routine formulas of keyboard composition farther and farther behind.

Charles Avison (1709-1770) - 12 Concerti Grossi after Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti
The Brandenburg Consort / Roy Goodman
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 760 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion # CDD22060 | Country/Year: UK 2007, 1994
Genre: Classical | Style: (Late) Baroque

This two-CD set was originally issued by Hyperion on CDA 66891/2 in the mid-1990s; it’s good to have the collection available like this and it can be thoroughly recommended.

‘An eagle whose wings are grown,’ according to his father Alessandro, the young Scarlatti left his native Naples for Venice, ‘escorted only by his own ability.’ By his early 20s he had already held audiences in thrall with an ability at the harpsichord which was deemed almost supernatural. There is assuredly the most prodigal imagination at work, as well as an extraordinarily sophisticated keyboard technique, in the 555 surviving keyboard sonatas which fuse Italianate cantabile and counterpoint with vivid Hispanic imagery: folksong, castanets, military trumpets and strumming guitars.

Kudos to Naxos for the way it has handled its ongoing series covering Domenico's enormous body of keyboard sonatas: in a repertory only (at best) loosely divisible into chronological or stylistic groupings, they have opted instead to divide the sonatas up among different performers. The buyer gets to look at these miniature masterworks, which can be performed in so many different ways, through different lenses.

Domenico Scarlatti - Christian Zacharias, Piano - Sonatas
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 181 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Gold" # 340 1162-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2003
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

Has been one of the best musical discoveries I've had: those of Scarlatti Sonatas, the interpretation of Christian Zacharias and the MDG label. A superb full of poetry with a unique sound abosultamente crystal clear. A disc highly recommended for lovers of classical music for piano.

Occasionally—very occasionally—a record appears that is so exactly right in every particular that a reviewer just sits back and gives himself up to sheer enjoyment (though making a mental note to reserve a place for it among his choices for the year). This is one such: its combination of Scarlatti's inexhaustible and unpredictable invention with Trevor Pinnock's vitality and rhythmic energy must surely lift the spirits of even the most jaded listener. Pinnock never puts a finger wrong here, literally or figuratively: he captures the atmosphere of each sonata with complete understanding, responsive to all Scarlatti's little quirks, and conveying a feeling of whole-heartedly enjoying himself.

The astonishing technical variety and wide emotional range contained in Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas make each and every encounter a rewarding adventure in which the listener is seldom left untouched. This is Pierre Hantaï’s third solo disc of Scarlatti’s sonatas though only the second in his current series for the Mirare label. It contains several pieces less frequently performed than others and with which many readers may find themselves unfamiliar. The first item, in fact, is one of only seven sonatas of Scarlatti’s that is a straightforward fugue. It is an uncharacteristically didactic piece, even a shade austere compared to the rest of Hantaï’s recital which contains a kaleidoscope of colourful images. What Hantaï seems to be emphasising in his choice is that elusive, somewhat abstracted improvisatory quality present in so many of the pieces and of which the Sonata in E major K 215 provides a well-sustained example. Generally speaking, Hantaï follows Ralph Kirkpatrick’s suggestion that Scarlatti probably intended to group his sonatas into pairs or occasionally threes according to key.

Newcastle-born and -based, Charles Avison issued his string arrangements of harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti in 1744. Forty-two of Scarlatti's sonatas had been published by Roseingrave in London five years earlier and it was these which, by and large, provided Avison with his material. 'By and large', since, as Stephen Roe remarks in his note, the sonatas included only two slow movements and Avison, planning 12 concertos in the slow-fast-slow-fast scheme favoured by his teacher, Geminiani, required 24.