John Browning Performs Domenico Scarlatti

John Browning performs Domenico Scarlatti liner notes

Approximately 40 years have passed since Ralph Kirkpatrick published his epic study of the life and works of Domenico Scarlatti. This wonderful book, the product of the author's unique combination of artistic and scholarly talents, helped to dispel once and for all the superficial impression of Domenico Scarlatti as a sort of rococo lightweight, a composer of "original and happy freaks" as one of his 18th century contemporaries described him. Today, several decades into our international love affair with 18th century performance practice, Domenico Scarlatti is a towering figure universally accepted as one of the greatest and most original artists of the Baroque. With the exception of a few Sonatas intended for the organ, Scarlatti's keyboard music was composed for the harpsichord. Interestingly enough, the most accomplished and profound of the Scarlatti Sonatas appear to have been written for a relatively simple instrument. "Indeed the Spanish harpsichords ... had only two registers, probably one keyboard, and a choice of three colors at the most, namely the two individual registers separately and the combined sound of the two together. ... Changes of register ... were possible only at breaks or pauses between musical sections .... " Thus Scarlatti very largely counteracted the limitations of his instruments ... by the manner in which he wrote for them ... by his spacings of voices, by contrasts of high and low registers, and by the varied shadings of harpsichord sound which he composed into the musical fabric." (Italics mine). For example, more notes in a chord would make the given chord sound louder, fewer notes would give the effect of a piano dynamic. Although capable of sounding almost all the notes as Scarlatti wrote them, a modern pianist playing Scarlatti is in a sense playing a transcription. Clearly it is foolish to try to make the piano aspire to a harpsichord dynamic. On the other hand, the pianist needs to inform his interpretations with a knowledge of baroque style, with a feel for specific splashes of instrumental color and above all, with a sense for that most wonderful of baroque inventions, the basso continua, which is fundamental to any work of baroque music from the simplest accompanied monody to the most complex fugue. As Kirkpatrick reminds us, "It is those pianists with the greatest feeling for specifically musical values, for line, rhythm, and fine-grained harmonic structure, who succeed in making Scarlatti sound best on the piano." To such accomplished Scarlatti interpreters as Vladimir Horowitz, Maria Tipo and Andras Schiff may now be added the name of John Browning.