Times are good for
Scarlatti. Recordings of the Sonatas
are plentiful – at least of a percentage
of the famously huge number Scarlatti
produced – and there are surely approaches
to suit all tastes, from harpsichord,
to pianistic via piano performances
that show timbral awareness of the works’
harpsichord origins. Delving back in
the catalogue you can encounter a newly
remastered Horowitz selection and go
even further back and you can still
find Marcelle Meyer’s outstanding late
1940s and 1950s set of a good number
of sonatas. Into the lists advances
Joyce Hatto who now seems to have recorded
the entire piano literature for Concert
Artist barring Billy Mayerl and some
Fats Waller transcriptions – though
I wouldn’t put even these past her.
For me she strikes
a fine note between the extremes of
rhythmic snap and pianistic indulgence.
Her tempi are well sustained though
in comparison with such as Meyer and
Horowitz they are generally a notch
or two down. In K380 with its famous
ringing fanfares she flows elegantly
with some delicious left hand fill-ins.
The B minor K87 sees her keeping a firm
grip on tempo; Marcelle Meyer is uncharacteristically
quite a bit slower than Hatto and though
Meyer mines the expressive contours
more obviously, Hatto’s profile is quite
apposite. With a more harpsichord based
pianism such as Meyer provided one feels
the tempi and accents feed off each
other and such is certainly the case
in K159 in C major where for all Hatto’s
lacery, glinting trills and perky bass
pointing Meyer’s more briskly accented
playing still leads the way.
One thing I especially
admire about Hatto is her ability to
vest wistful depth without resorting
either to distended tempi or tired romantic
gestures (as in the F minor K466). And
yet it’s salutary to note how the character
of a sonata can change utterly given
differing tempo and accenting considerations
– such as the E major K162 where Horowitz’s
greater speed turns it into a romantic
idyll and Hatto finds in it a more stoical
reflectiveness. And even with her little
caesuri Hatto sustains the span of K481
in F minor with unselfconsciousness
and crucially without a sense of dragging.
The sound in the Concert
Artist studio is warm and it suits these
performances that seem to belong to
no particular school of Scarlatti playing
but are, rather, the product of practical
application and imagination.
Jonathan Woolf
See
Full list of Concert Artist recordings