With
this volume, Pieter-Jan Belder passes the halfway point
in his complete recording of all of Scarlatti’s 555 sonatas.
While
he may not quite have the panache or individuality of Scott
Ross, Pieter-Jan Belder is a very fine musician and this
is another valuable volume in an excellent series.
Most
of these sonatas come from volumes V and VI of the fifteen
volumes of Scarlatti’s sonatas which formerly belonged
to his patron (and pupil) Queen Maria Barbara of Spain
and which are now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
in Venice (Mss. 9770-9784). Ralph Kirkpatrick, while admiring
a number of individual sonatas contained in them, didn’t
regard volumes V-VIII very highly, observing “I cannot
feel that the sonatas pf these three volumes add appreciably
to Scarlatti’s glory. They contain many excellent pieces,
but almost none that in some measure does not duplicate
what he has already said or what he will say later. To
a musical housebreaker among the Queen’s manuscripts, or
to a modern thief in the Biblioteca Marciana, I would give
the following advice, in the event of limited baggage:
Take all you can carry, but if something must be left behind,
let it be volumes I, II, V, VI, and VII”.
Perhaps
these are, for the most part, relatively run-of-the-mill
sonatas, by the standards of Scarlatti. But those are pretty
high standards; Scarlatti, even when not at the very peak
of his art is eminently worth one’s attention – this is
still music which fascinates and stimulates, especially
when played as well as it is here.
Particular
pleasures include K273 in which a pastorale replaces the ‘excursion’,
the central section of the second half, with its evocation
of the zampognari, the rustic Italian bagpipe players
Scarlatti must often have heard in his youth, and K282
into whose D major development Scarlatti unexpectedly inserts
a minuet in D minor. K284 is a variant on rondo form, with
some remarkable bass drones and the flavour of a rural
dance. In K308, marked cantabile, there is an unmistakable
sense of a solo ‘voice’ with accompaniment and its partner,
K309 is interesting for, amongst other things, the deceptive
cadences which effect a ‘false’ ending.
Many
of the sonatas included here are less virtuosic than some
of their predecessors. To quote Kirkpatrick once more, “never
again, does Scarlatti return to reckless flamboyance of
his earlier pieces. He retains his virtuosity and all the
colors of his instrumental palette, but he handles them
with a sobriety and concentration that have always been
the attributes of the mature artist in his old age”. Belder
can, of course, handle the technical demands of Scarlatti’s
virtuoso sonatas with very few problems; here he shows
that he can also play simpler sonatas with sensitivity
and lyricism.
Volume
V of the manuscript collection in the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana also contains Scarlatti’s two organ voluntaries,
K287 and 288. The first of these, in another manuscript,
carries the superscription “Per Organo da Camera con due
Tastatura Flautato e Trombone”. The Venice manuscript carries
full indications for changes of manuals. There are some
splendid effects and it makes one wonder what some of the
sonatas might sound like on a small organ. Bender uses
an 1842 organ by C. F. A. Naber; one can imagine them being
even more successful on a Spanish organ with a bit more
bite and colour.
As
is the way with this series, Bender plays sequences of
sonatas on different instruments. The sonatas on CD 1 are
played on a copy, by Cornelis Bom (2003) of a harpsichord
by the Luccan-born maker Giovanni Battista Giusti, whose
most famous surviving creations belong to the 1670s. The
instrument used on CD 2 is described in exactly the same
way, but sounds very slightly different – maybe this is
just a result of the acoustic and the recording. On CD
3 Bender plays another copy by Cornelis Bom, this time
of an instrument by one or other of the Ruckers and made
in 1999. The copy (copies?) after Giusti is/are superb
and seemingly perfectly suited to the music. The instrument
modelled on the work of the Ruckers workshop feels a little
heavy at times, but gives a distinctive and generally attractive
colour to the music.
Not
long ago I looked at a book of 1785 in London. It was a
small selection of Scarlatti’s keyboard works made by Ambrose
Pitman (a pupil of Arne’s), under the title of The beauties
of Dominico Scarlatti. Selected from his suites de lecons,
for the harpsichord or pianoforte. For all his admiration
of Scarlatti, Pitman’s collection carried on its title-page
a note declaring that the works had been Revised with
a Variety of Improvements - Pitman later makes it clear
that he believes the music to be overfull of “superfluous
and studied difficulties”. Despite his willingness to ‘improve’ them
(like Nahum Tate ‘improving’ Shakespeare) he ringingly
affirmed in the opening sentence of his Preface that “The
Lessons of Dominico Scarlatti have ever been esteemed by
Musical Theorists for their many excellencies of taste,
Genius and Originality”. These “many excellencies” – without
added ‘improvements’ – are very attractively placed before
the listener in this highly enjoyable set of CDs. I look
forward to later volumes.
Glyn Pursglove
Pieter-Jan
Beldwer (harpsichord, organ) 
