Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What Scarlatti sonata to pick?

My teacher wants me to play baroque. I have played enough Bach, but no Scarlatti. I like his sonatas a lot, but I only know a few from concert CDs from Argerich en Horowitz.

So my question: can you advice particular Scarlatti sonatas?

Pre-requisites:
- No (strong) counterpoint
- Not technically hard, rather musically challenging.
- Typical Scarlatti piece
- Typical for the style period.

The two f minor sonatas, K. 466 and 481. They work great as a pair.

I love Scarlatti though I have no firsthand experience with his sonatas.

What about all the other Baroque composers? I think Bach has unjustly drowned them out. Handel's suites are fantastic, and I think Rameau is great as well.

Scarlatti being hard or not is often due to the tempo in which you play.

For perfect playing fingering is important.

Unfortunately I do not have the score and sonata number here but one of my favourites is one in A minor with a lot of repeated notes in groups of six in RH, and chords in LF. These groups alternate with arpeggios and other broken chords. So theses fast figures togehter with a few thrills make it technically demanding, but it is musically very well sounding. It is obvious that Scarlatti had got inspiration from Spanish guitar music, but this sonata is perhaps not a typical baroque piece

I do not play as fast as Augerich, and in my tempo I make use of the pedal for a fuller sound.
In this way I heard it for the first time on an LP with the Russian pianist Petrov.

The piano has been developed a lot since the days of Scarlatti, and there is no recordings and unbroken tradition of how to perform, so i think you have a lot of freedom.

.

Jan Erik- I believe that's the K175 one? It's also my personal favourite!

i have learned K9 and K3 in past 2 years, and K9 is a little easier, while K3 has some counterpoint which needs good hand coordination. both are not very difficult, but it's hard to make them sound good, for me at least.

Scarlatti especially requires some specific sound effect, even more than Bach, i feel, and unless you have really good Baroque techniques, it's very difficult to create that 'sound'. i have Pletnev's CD set which has both K3 and K9. if you listen to his K3, it sounds like 'liquid' and smooth flow, which i just cannot duplicate.

http://www.amazon.com/Mikhail-Pletn...mp;s=music&qid=1191873981&sr=8-7

I really like K531 (L430) and K55 (L335)

I am curious about the 'barque technique' that creates the specific sound effect. A piano has the piano sound and cannot sound like a baroque instrument like the harpsichord, or claivichord etc.

IMO one feature of baroque music is that the melodies (voices) are very clearly heard - all notes like the pearls of a necklace. Normally you play legato using very little or no pedalling. The melodies must by no mean sound blurred.

Staccato and phrasing depending of the instrument's capabilities - here the piano perhaps offers more than necessary.

So thus baroque music is played with a differents approach than e.g. romantic music, where you maximize the exploatation of the piano's capacity..

Thank you all for your suggestions. I looked them up on the imslp website. I used a very good conversion chart from K to L numbers (Kirkpatrick catalogue to Longo catalogue). You can find it at http://www.karadar.it/Cataloghi/scarlatti_domenico.html

I decidedm to go first with Kreisler’s suggestion for K 466 481 (L 118 187). Because they seem melodious, diverse, rather slow (“andante”) and technically not too hard.
After that I’ll give K 175 or 9 (L.429 413) a chance.

K3 (L378) is yet too tricky for me: counterpoint in presto. The same holds true for K 531 and 55 (L430 335) which are at higher tempo and they looked like containg more passage work. I my self like L.422 (K 141) at least how Argerich plays it, but well, I prefer to start technically easy with Scarlatti.

More suggestions welcome! + I hope to learn so much that in the longer run I can participate in the discussion of the Baroque sound which I - to my pleasure - see unfolding in this thread.

if you like crossing hand thing, then try K25, which was the one i attempted but never finished a few years back. it's not too difficult.

I posted this link on some other thread, Robert, and I can't find it now to see if you saw it or not, but here is a performance of the K466 that I think is just lovely:

Shaun Tirrell playing K. 466 on a M&H CC