5 Sonatas

Of all the harpsichord composers only J.S.Bach is more attractive to pianists than Domenico Scarlatti. If it took them rather longer to discover Scarlatti it was probably because, in comparison with his German contemporary, he seemed to be a less than serious thinker. As Schumann put it in 1839, “he is far emptier and flightier… Think of comparing this to Bach!”

It is true that in the preface to his Essercizi, the one volume of sonatas published in his lifetime, Scarlatti warned his readers not to expect “any profound learning but rather an ingenious jesting with art.” But jesting that sustains more than 550 sonatas, most of them single-movements in binary form but every one a distinctive inspiration, is extraordinarily, indeed uniquely ingenious. It wasn’t until the early decades of the last century that, with the publication of not far short of all the sonatas in the Longo edition, it was generally understood that Scarlatti was no “dwarf among giants” but a giant himself. In the meantime, however, pianists as distinguished as Czerny, Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Brahms had discovered that his keyboard writing was not only brilliantly conceived but scarcely less valid on the piano than on the harpsichord.

Until fairly recently it was customary – in accordance with the findings of the pre-eminent Scarlatti scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick (to whom we owe the Kk catalogue numbering) – to present the sonatas in pairs. On this occasion a pair of Sonatas in D minor is followed by two in C major and to return to the tonic, so to speak, one in D major. Headed Gavota Kk 64 is one of the few Scarlatti sonatas in dance form but, regular gavotte though it is, it trips against some hard harmonic obstacles on its way from and back to the home key. Contrastingly easy-going, Kk 9 is so serene that it has attracted the nickname “Pastorale” – which, together with its discreet Spanish colouring, has made it one of the best known of all Scarlatti sonatas.

Of the two Sonatas in C major, the briskly contrapuntal Kk 72 is firmly anchored to the tonic key in spite of teasingly veering away from it towards the end. Kk 132, on the other hand, is so free in form and harmony that it is more a fantasia than a sonata, venturing into distant modulations and jarring dissonances and apparently not quite certain that C major is where it wants to be even in the closing bars. While the Sonata in D Kk 29 celebrates the cross-hands technique with a vigour unparalleled in its tenacity anywhere else in the collection, it compensates for the muscular stress it causes by means of its perfectly timed and irresistibly poignant episodes in the minor.