Domenico Scarlatti: Sonatas - Trevor Pinnock

Domenico Scarlatti
Sonatas
Trevor Pinnock
Archiv 419 632-2

Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757): 14 Sonatas for Harpsichord. Performed by Trevor Pinnock on a harpsichord by David Jacques Way of Stonington, Connecticut, built in 1982 and modelled on original instruments by Hemsch and others (c. 1755). Recorded at the New Victoria Theatre, Basford, Newcastle-under-Lyme, England in October 1986. Originally released in 1987 as Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 419 632-2 and since re-released at mid-price Scarlatti: Sonatas. Total playing time: 55'55".

As to the content of this disc, it can be best understood through a verbatim quote from the original liner notes by Malcolm Boyd: "The 14 sonatas recorded here are included in the last three volumes of the two principal sources. They therefore exemplify few of the more overt Hispanic touches and, with one notable exception (K. 529), none of the extravagant, athletic leaps and hand-crossings which are well-known features of Scarlatti's keyboard style; such 'happy freaks' (to borrow Burney's phrase) are confined to some of the earlier volumes. But they do show at its most mature the composer's idiosyncratic mastery of the binary structure which he adopted and developed as the almost invariable framework for the workings of his amazingly fertile imagination."

The performance by Trevor Pinnock is the best Scarlatti I have ever heard. Nowhere, even when Scarlatti demands "prestissimo" playing (K. 517), does one ever get the impression that Pinnock is "showing off" his virtuosity or intruding his personality on what the composer wrote. Pinnock's choice of tempi and his "art of touching the keyboard" seem rather designed to show forth all the glories of Scarlatti's sonatas, including their playful aspects, without ever relegating him to the status of a witty but superficial stylist. This is evidenced, for example, by a comparison of Pinnock's K. 544 and K. 545 with the same sonatas as played by Luc Beauséjour on Analekta (Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas), where Pinnock's version adds a profundity and a degree of musical statement to the music which Beauséjour, for all his skill and buoyancy, misses. Each and every piece on the Pinnock disc shines with some or other feature which makes it "just right" (and the original liner notes are singularly helpful, too, in spotting the chief characteristics). Add to this the typically superb Deutsche Grammophon acoustics (recorded quite near the instrument but with a minimum of mechanical noises) and you have what may be the best selection of Scarlatti sonatas ever recorded on a harpsichord.

Leslie Richford, Amazon Customer