Three Sonatas

One of the innumerable attractions of the Scarlatti sonatas is that with so many single-movement pieces to choose from - no fewer than 555 according to the Kirkpatrick catalogue - there is no end to the number of effective groupings that can be made of them. While there is an aesthetically persuasive theory that the composer himself thought of them in terms of pairs of pieces linked by their tonality, there is no documentary evidence to support it. Even if there were, it would be no reason why harpsichordists or pianists should not make their own selections.

The two B minor pieces chosen on this occasion make a particularly effective pair. Although, like the vast majority of these works, they are both divided into two more or less equal halves, each part repeated, they are as different in construction as they are in tempo. The Andante is so informal as to drop its opening theme after three bars and speculate, intermittently, on a fluent and freely inflected line poised over a pattern of falling arpeggios in the left hand. The opening two-part-invention material of the Allegro is also displaced after three bars, in this case in favour of a characteristic passage of agile hand-crossing, but then it is immediately (if briefly) reinstated and formally recalled at the beginning the second part. The A major Allegro molto is different again. The recklessly brilliant keyboard figuration of the first half is transcended by the flamenco-style colouring of a second half that recalls the opening theme amid vigorous strummed guitar sounds clearly absorbed during the composer’s long period of residence in Madrid.