This is the eleventh CD
in Naxos’s very slowly unfolding series of Domenico Scarlatti’s
keyboard sonatas. The earliest recordings in the series
were made in 1994, this latest volume in 2007. Though I
am not normally a great fan of piano performances of music
originally intended for the harpsichord, I am always prepared
to make an exception when the playing is sensitive to the
composer’s intentions, as is the case here. In any event,
with recommendable complete sets on the harpsichord already
on the market – notably Scott Ross’s complete set on Warner
and the 5- and 6-CD volumes recently reissued by Nimbus – Naxos
were wise to offer piano versions. Some sonatas may, in
fact, have been intended for an early form of the fortepiano – K149
(track 16) is a case in point.
It was probably wise,
too, not to give the whole set to one pianist but to share
the volumes amongst a number of performers. Some of the
earlier volumes have been assigned to well-established pianists,
such as Benjamin Frith, whose performances on Volume 5 Gary
Higginson and Kevin Sutton both thought worth adding to your
collection (8.554792 – see GH’s
review and
KS’s
review.) Michael
Lewin’s contribution on Volume 2 (8.553067) has also been
generally well received.
More recent volumes have
tended to involve rising stars as, for example, Soyeon Lee
on Volume 8, whose performances Patrick Waller rated on a
par with Benjamin Frith’s (8.570010 – see
review)
and Gottlieb Wallisch falls into that category. We seem
to have missed out on Volumes 9 (8.570368 – Francesco Nicolosi)
and 10 (8.570511 – Colleen Lee) but reviews elsewhere have
been generally favourable and I am certainly pleased to have
received Volume 11.
I hadn’t encountered Wallisch
before hearing him on this CD, but this was a very promising
introduction. My first complete run-through of the recording,
with critical faculties at least partly suspended – at any
rate, without pen at the ready – was very favourable. The
name which keeps cropping up in any consideration of Scarlatti
on the piano is that of Horowitz; I have to say that I actually
preferred what I heard here to those Horowitz Scarlatti performances
which I have heard.
Subsequent, more critical
listening confirmed my initial favourable impression; Wallisch
resists any temptation to make these sonatas into big pianistic
statements and he is alive to the requirements of the variety
of the music represented here. His style reminds me of
Angela Hewitt’s Bach, my only criticism of which is that
if she can play Bach on the piano so effectively, I’d love
to hear her play his music on the harpsichord. Wallisch
now enters my pantheon along with Hewitt and Stephen Gutman,
whose Toccata recording of Volume 1 of Rameau’s keyboard
music surprised (TOCC0050 – see
review)
proved such an exception to my dislike of harpsichord music
on the piano that I very much hope to receive his second
volume when it appears.
The notes skate lightly
over the question of whether certain of these sonatas were
intended as pairs by Scarlatti. Several of the sonatas here
are indeed paired by their Kirkpatrick (K) numbers – two
are even paired in the earlier Longo catalogue: K.347 and
K.348 (tracks 5 and 6) = L.126 and L.127. These two sonatas
are clearly linked in the ninth Venice volume. Other pairings
in the K catalogue are preserved and mentioned as pairs without
further comment – K.376 and 377 (trs.10 and 11) and 148 and
149 (trs.15 and 16). Not all Kirkpatrick’s proposed pairings
are preserved here, however: K.384 (tr.3), for example, appears
to be paired with K.385 in the Venice collection, but only
K.384 is offered here.
I’m not going to get into
an issue which has caused scholarly disagreement, other than
to note that only one of the K pairings here is preserved
in Pestelli’s catalogue – K.376 and 377 are P.246 and 245
respectively. I should add that the dates given in the headnote
are those of the relevant albums from the collection of Queen
Maria Barbara, which were probably taken to Venice by the
castrato Farinelli.
The recording is as good
as my colleagues have reported of previous volumes and the
presentation first-rate: the documentation even includes
the older L and more recent P numbers, which I have omitted
from the heading of this review to avoid complicating matters. The
notes in the booklet, as usual with Keith Anderson, are full
and scholarly yet eminently readable – though I wish he had
delivered his authoritative judgement on the pairing issue – and
the cover illustration most apposite.
I wouldn’t want the whole
series – I do, after all, prefer the harpsichord in this
music, and I’m not sure anyway that I’ve got room in my bulging
collection for all Scarlatti’s 555 extant sonatas – but would
recommend the present CD as a good place to dip your toe
into, along with, perhaps, Volume 5 and some of the volumes
from the Nimbus set. If you want the whole
œuvre,
I’d recommend plumping for the Scott Ross
omnium gatherum on
Warner (2564620922, 34 CDs for around £85). If the Ross
set is too much to consider, there’s a useful single-CD selection
from it on mid-price Warner Elatus (2564600302). I must
also mention Mikhail Pletnev’s bargain-price 2-CD piano set
on Virgin de Virgin 5 61961 2.
The smallest volume in
the Nimbus series, though a collection of ‘left-overs’, would
make a good place to start sampling what Richard Lester has
to offer (NI1731, 3 CDs) – I certainly thought so when I
wrote my
review of
it and my colleague Mark Sealey concurred. Completists will
want that set of addenda and appendices, anyway, since it
contains some works not included in Scott Ross’s set.
Don’t forget the excellent
recent recording by the Avison Ensemble of the Concerti Grossi
which the English composer Charles Avison wove out of a handful
of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas in 1744 (Divine Art DDA21213 – 2
CDs for one: see
review).
Brian Wilson
Gottlieb Wallisch
(piano) 
