Mikhail Pletnev - Mikhail Pletnev ~ Domenico Scarlatti - Keyboard Sonatas
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Free Music Notes for Mikhail Pletnev ~ Domenico Scarlatti - Keyboard Sonatas
Free Music Review: Not a bad price....
Hit: 2 Stars
If you're looking for perfection, keep looking. Technically shoddy to the point of distraction. However, for $3/CD, it will make a good gift for your mother-in-law.Free Music Review: Superb Scarlatti
Hit: 5 Stars
Another favorite disc which prompted me to purchase both Horowitz and Schiff recordings. I can't find fault with Pletnev's playing and he certainly does not suffer by comparison with any other pianists I've heard performing Scarlatti. There's a very good chance you will love these performances too. The music is dazzling.Free Music Review: Insipid and boring Scarlatti performances
Hit: 1 Stars
I bought this two-CD album after reading many of the glowing reviews
here. Boy, was I in for an unhappy surprise. These performances are
in general joyless and sound like Mr. Pletnev was sight-reading them
after a few disinterested practice sessions, eager to finish his contractual obligation, collect, and move on. The recorded sound is
very blah. In no way can these performances be compared with those
of pianists like Horowitz or Sudbin or Browning, who bring life-
enriching insight, technical polish and a sense of mission to their
work. Do yourselves a favor and stay away. Oh, and BTW, don't forget
the old saw, "If the bargain is too good to be true.." You get what you
pay for.
Free Music Review: Better than Horowitz
Hit: 5 Stars
Pletnev's interpretation of Scarlatti is excellent and a definite improvement on the standard set by Horowitz. Highly recommended.Free Music Review: Poor Domenico...
Hit: 5 Stars
... overshadowed in his youth by his father, always known as "the Great Scarlatti," and now overshadowed once again by the rediscovery of daddy Alessandro's spectacular oratorios and altar-operas. I suspect that Domenico would gnash his teeth rather than exulting in filial pride. Nothing I've read about the younger Scarlatti suggests a generous spirit.
Even more tragic, Domenico Scarlatti was born too soon; he wrote at least 555 sonatas for an instrument that hadn't yet been invented!Domenico Scarlatti never knew the piano. He composed all his sonatas on and for the harpsichord. Anyone who has encountered my previous reviews of Glen Gould and Angela Hewitt may remember that I'm bluntly contemptuous of performances of JS Bach's harpsichord music, especially the Goldberg Variations, on modern piano. One might as well play beach volleyball in a tuxedo.
Domenico Scarlatti arrived on the scene of keyboard composition at the very moment when the resources of the harpsichord were no longer adequate to the musical aesthetic of the era. Those 555 sonatas scream out for pianism, for shadings of dynamics, for sustained resonances, and other qualities in herent in the piano and absent from the harpsichord. I can enjoy Scarlatti on harpsichord only one sonata per listening session, whether live or recorded. More than one, frankly, bores me to slumber. The same sonatas played on piano can also be monotonous if the pianist treats them gravely, earnestly, as grand art. Scarlatti didn't even call these works 'sonatas' but rather "essercizi" - exercises. He intended them as whimsies, as ingenious musical jests, to stretch his own keyboard techniques to the level of fantasy as well as to give free rein to his delight in the sounds of nature, of Spanish folk music, and popular dance.
Mikhail Pletnev performs the 31 essercizi on these two CDs exactly as I imagine Domenico would have, if he'd had a piano, with impassioned eccentricity. Pletnev's technique is fully up to the demands of odd hand-crossings, tumultuous rhythms, unrestrained clashes of dissonance, and greyhound finger passages. He achieves what I think is necessary in Scarlatti, to define and yet to articulate the fleeting moods of these four minute tours de force. In comparison, every other performance on CD of the younger Scarlatti sounds to me plodding and timid - like "exercises" indeed.
Ironically, it's Domenico Scarlatti's vocal works that have the greater power to energize a modern audience. See my previous review of his Stabat Mater a dieci voci, performed by Concerto Italiano, conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.