The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti never fell out of the repertory the way most other Baroque music did, and there is a tradition of performing it on the piano that is perhaps even longer than that for Bach's keyboard music. It is still odd, however, to see the words "piano sonatas" on the cover of an album like this one, for they are actually sonatas for harpsichord. Much is lost when they are played on the piano -- for example the subtle linkage in the eighteenth century mind between the harpsichord and the guitar ...
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The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti never fell out of the repertory the way most other Baroque music did, and there is a tradition of performing it on the piano that is perhaps even longer than that for Bach's keyboard music. It is still odd, however, to see the words "piano sonatas" on the cover of an album like this one, for they are actually sonatas for harpsichord. Much is lost when they are played on the piano -- for example the subtle linkage in the eighteenth century mind between the harpsichord and the guitar, especially in the work of a composer who worked in Spain and let its vernacular traditions subtly flavor his music. The beginning of the fourth track on this album, the Sonata in D major, K. 435, sounds arbitrary on a piano but makes perfect sense on a harpsichord. That said, the huge variety of ways Scarlatti could infuse dense chromaticism into a simple binary form gains added articulation when the sonatas are made to sound like Chopin, as the slower ones are here. Russian-born...
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