![]() ![]() In preparing my list for this post, I restricted myself to the contents of this book. Furthermore, she states in her preface that she chose pieces ranging from easy to intermediate level of difficulty, making this a great gateway for teachers and students. Fadini has been playing, studying, and living with this music since at least 1987 (and probably much longer than that!) her choices really mean something. In addition to various selections by Henle, Schirmer, and EMB, Ricordi released a sixty-sonata selection in 2016 extracted from the ongoing complete critical edition by keyboardist and scholar Emilia Fadini (nine of ten volumes are available). ![]() The other starting point is in sheet music. So seeking out recordings is one place to start. The catalog is deep enough that a musician can still “claim” a piece as their own if it hasn’t had much time in the spotlight. So if you’re new to this music, it’s more a matter of…where to start? When pianists and harpsichordists program or record Scarlatti, their selections may overlap sightly in featuring particularly popular sonatas, but may also reflect their individual tastes. The 555 sonatas are labeled according to at least four different catalogues (Kirkpatrick, Longo, Pestelli, Czerny), and they’re almost all really good. It’s still a bit intimidating to start venturing into this repertoire. I gave up somewhere in the 200s, and since then I’ve sought out this music only sporadically, until now. This quickly became irrelevant, because almost every single piece had some cool or memorable feature. Excited by this zip file of riches, I set out to listen to all the sonatas, writing down my favorites as I went, hopefully to arrive at a selection of 50 or so of the best. I discovered Scarlatti at age ten or so, when I found a website of classical MIDI files that included all 555 of his sonatas, sequenced by the indefatigable John Sankey. The music is full of odd surprises, like gestures that seem less than idiomatic for the instrument or advanced harmonies and dissonances. A single three- or four-minute Scarlatti sonata can traverse a wide range of emotions in the span of a simple AB form, leaving the listener satisfied. His music is bite-sized, sounds great on piano or harpsichord, and features the lightness of the Italian Baroque, forays into Classical style, and some Spanish flair from his music master positions in Seville and Madrid. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) is a real treasure. ![]()
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