Sonata in D major, K.53

Sonata in A major, K.322

Sonata in D major K.492

One of the many attractions of the Scarlatti sonatas is that, with more than five hundred single-movement constructions to chose from, there is no end to the number of coherent sequences that can be made by linking a careful selection of them together. The composer himself, as is clear from Ralph Kirkpatrick’s chronological catalogue, thought in terms of pairs. It is quite possible, on the other hand, to make entertaining suites out of three or four (or more) of them even though, in chronological terms, they might be decades apart. The relatively early Sonata in D major, K.53 - which was written before Scarlatti became too corpulent on the fat of the Spanish court to indulge himself, if we are to believe Charles Burney, in his favourite hand-crossing technique - is a highly effective virtuoso invention. It is comparable in every way to the similarly dramatic Sonata in the same key, K.492, except that the brilliance in this case derives largely from guitar-like arpeggio figuration and contradictory scales in the left hand and right hand. The Sonata in A major, K.322, in its dominant tonality and its contrastingly simple two-voice texture, is ideally well placed between them.