Domenico Scarlatti: 17 sonatas - Zhu Xiao-Mei (piano)

Another gem from the French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel's INA/mèmoire vive series, recorded in concert at Martinů Hall, Prague Academy of Music (15 November 1995).

Elegance, vitality, grace, energy. A wondrous little thing. You'll see.
Don't miss the lagniappe, the Schubert Allegretto on the last track.

Not my own rip -- this now out-of-print recording is shared here with the generous collaboration of DanseDePuck.

flac+cue+covers

Welcome to All the Pleasures - The English Concert, Pinnock

Bach, Boyce, Haydn, Händel,
Mozart, Purcell, Scarlatti, Vivaldi
Welcome to All the Pleasures
The English Concert, Trevor Pinnock
Archiv 437 175-2

I am thrilled that Archiv Produktion in Canada has assembled "Welcome To All The Pleasures", and happy that it includes so many personal favorites from my discography. This celebration of choral, keyboard and orchestral music on authentic instruments is a voyage filled with delicious musical pleasures and warm personal memories, for 1993 marks my fifteenth anniversary with Archiv Produktion, and the twentieth anniversary of my founding of The English Concert. My new assosiation with Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra is providing every bit as adventurous and is filled with the pleasures of rich musical rewards. So, indeed, welcome to all the pleasures!

Trevor Pinnock

Scarlatti: Concerti & Sinfonie - Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi

Alessandro & Domenico Scarlatti
Concerti & Sinfonie
Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi
Virgin 5 45495 2

This recording presents music by two Scarlattis: Alessandro (1660-1725), composer of innumerable vocal and chamber works, and his son Domenico (1685-1757), famous mostly for his several hundred keyboard sonatas. Alessandro is represented by six Concerti Grossi, a Sonata, and a Sinfonia; Domenico by three Sinfonias. All feature solo instruments: harp, recorder, and most prominently, violins and continuo cello. Alessandro fostered his son's talent, but the two eventually, perhaps inevitably, became rivals, and Domenico left his native Rome for Portugal and then Spain. Most of Alessandro's music recorded here is somber, solemn, and mournful, full of dissonances and sighing suspensions; four of the six concerti are in minor, but the two in major are bright and sprightly. One of the highlights is the slow, pastoral Finale of No. 6. They vary greatly in form, character, and texture; there is much masterful counterpoint, pungent rhythmic inventiveness, and a chromaticism that seems ahead of its time.

Europa Galante, an excellent Italian period-instrument group, is distinguished by its successful blending of meticulous technical and ensemble execution with musical spontaneity. Notable among the soloists are cellist Maurizio Naddeo and recorder player Petr Zeifart. Violinist Fabio Biondi, the group's director, is outstanding for his virtuosity, beautiful tone, and daring, inventive ornamentation. He deserves our gratitude for rescuing these unfamiliar works from undeserved neglect.

Edith Eisler, Amazon.com Editorial Review

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