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I just started on the K32 sonata. I tend to use the pedal to connect a few phrases once or twice to make it sound more pleasant.

I'm going to be learning a lot more Scarlatti sonatas, so I wanted to know if its bad practice to use the sustain pedal. How do you play them?

Good question. In a little Scarlatti piece I learned a long time ago, I remember using very little pedal. Just to give it a tad bit more texture. This worked for me.
But since we're on the subject...
At a masterclass I recently played at, the pianist teaching spoke briefly on Baroque music and pedal. He argued that it was not an issue of whether Bach/Scarlatti would have used a pedal in their days if they had the advancements. Instead, he told us to think about the sound. A great chunk of Baroque music was performed in churches, for churches, therefore... if we dwell on the sound in such a building, we can imagine that it would sound sustained in the air, echoing like music usually does when the pedal is held. It creates a beautiful ringing effect while at the same time maintaining that Baroque crispness. This is the sound Bach and Scarlatti wanted.
Mind you, that was HIS opinion - not mine. So before anyone criticizes this, remember that I am only repeating a masterclass I heard and thought was of interest.

I love to play Scarlatti. So far I have not used the pedal because on my upright it is really not sensitive enough to not sound too much. I am certainly not against it, if done well.

Horowitz called the pedal the 'soul' of the piano. His recordings of Scarlatti are very energetic.

Scarlatti isn't Bach, and IMO he does benefit from the sustain (and una corda) pedal in many of his pieces, especially the reflective ones.

One of my favorite Scarlatti sonatas is K141, which I've always played without pedal. Then one day, I happened to hear Martha Argerich play it, and was somewhat surprised at the liberal amounts of pedal she used......

If it's done tastefully it's perfectly fine, some would say better than no pedal.
Don't keep it down all the way or all the time, change it often, and don't use it as fake legato. Think about where you'd like to have some extra rich resonance and go from there.

I play Scarlatti (exclusively for my own pleasure) without any sustain pedal at all. Which is silly - he wasn't writing for a modern piano in the first place, so what does it matter? Go ahead, drench it in pedal, turn it into Impressionistic haze, feel free to do whatever you want. He has been dead for a long time, and won't come and rap your knuckles when you err (except maybe in a dream).

I have difficulty with legato leaps. That's when I use the pedal. I guess as long as the music turns out nice, how is secondary. I'll parallelly work on the leaps.

The leaps in Scarlatti can be difficult, but I don't recall any that were "legato".

Although very little is known about his person, judging from his unconventional compositions and what we know of the culture in the court where he worked, I don't think he would mind the modern ways either

Maybe not, but he is not of this time, so we cannot know that.

To me, that line of thought sounds like some sort of invented excuse for doing whatever you want. But why would you need to invent an excuse? Just go ahead and do it...he doesn't care, and you can be sure he will not offer an opinion.

On the other hand, if you are playing for others, they may care.

Perhaps they are not indicated as legato, but I like some of them to sound that way.

Here is Scarlatti filtered through a thoroughly modern sensibility, touched with sheer inspiration - and doing everything your teacher tells you is totally anachronistic in Baroque keyboard music (pedal wash, extreme refinements of tone, rubato and voicings, not to mention several witty touch-ups....):

http://youtu.be/9Jg-dYI53LY

There's very little we can know for sure, even when it comes to much later composers...



Excuse for what? As I said I don't use the pedal at all myself...

I have many editions of his works with almost no editing and he gave very little instructions about how to play the music. Improvisation in general was kept in high regards in his time. That and everything I've read about him and the music making of the time and place in general (which is quite a lot) just made me come to that conclusion.

Performance practices of old music are always based on educated guesses, trying to work with those has nothing to do with making excuses for doing whatever one wants. Many people (myself included) are just generally interested in understanding the music and the composers better and try to fit some of that with the modern instruments and expectations. We have no time machine to go back, but we can still try to answer some questions about the past.

Funny, I am working on the first sonata of that selection myself just now and that's not quite how I imagine it when I am done

I have never been able to really enjoy Plentnev's Scarlatti interpretations, the rhythmic flexibility and some other things is just too much for me. But that's a matter of taste, it's not about purism. I can respect his innovative thinking.

I am not so fond of Horowitch's Scarlatti recordings either.

Actually unlike Bach, Scarlatti was not a composer for church. He wrote first for Italian opera and after that for his royal pupil. It is debatable if some of the sonatas were written for pianoforte (there were already some in the court at that time), but most of it was performed by harpsichord. He was also not an organist like Bach. I see very little in common with Bach and Scarlatti, the latter is one of my favorites, while the former does not speak to me at all...

outo, could you list out your favourite pieces by Scarlatti?

That would be extremely difficult...There are probably at least 100 sonatas that I like a lot, I am a huge fan of his music. I have about 500 recordings of his sonatas in my iTunes...My favorite is probably what I am listening/playing at any given moment

But I'll be a sport and name a few great ones that come to mind (click the link for youtube):

K11


K27


K87


K109


K132


K247


K478


K434


K481


K466

I thought the opera-writing Scarlatti was his uncle, Alessandro. But I'm happy to be shown wrong.

John

Domenico was never as successfull as his father (not uncle) Alessandro, but he did start his career as an opera composer in Italy, before he left for Portugal and Spain. Not much has survived though.