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MS-802 STEREO

ale ‘DOMENICO SCARLATTI: SONATAS

FOU TS’ONG, Piano

Side One band1. Longo 457 (6:58) band 4. Longo 449 (3:07) band2. Longo 217 (3:42) band5. Longo 23 (5:21) band 3. Longo 82 (3:45) band 6. Longo 483 (2:31)

Side Two band1. Longo 482 (2:13) band 4. Longo 257 (8:35) band 2. Longo 238 (3:32) band 5. Longo 352 (2:28) band 3. Longo 256 (5:36) band 6. Longo 255 (2:34)

THE COMPOSER —If the vogue for massive observance of musical an- niversaries may be expected to persist, the next generation will have to cope with the most massive tercentary of them all. For 1685 was, to put it mildly, a year uniquely auspicious for music. Within that twelvemonth were born Handel, the elder Bach, and Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti.

Scarlatti’s father, Alessandro, was maestro di cappella at Naples and a composer of wide renown. But his son would be by far the more famous figure. At eighteen, an apprenticeship in the royal chapel already behind him, Domenico was studying in Rome with Bernardo Pasquini, Francesco Gasparini, and Arcangelo Corelli. In his early twenties, he became him- self a maestro di cappella. His patroness was the realmless Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, briefly a rival of the profligate Cardinal Pietro Otto- boni—the audacious prelate whose Accademie Poetico-Musicali (weekly private concerts ) on one occasion in 1709 featured a sensational virtuosity contest between Scarlatti and the visiting Handel (the latter won on the organ; on the harpsichord it was a draw).

In 1714 Casimira departed Italy for a chateau on the Loire as a guest of Louis XIV, her extravagances having left her suddenly in acute financial trouble. Meantime young Scarlatti had gone to work for the Vatican and, apparently at the same time, for the no less grand establish- ment of the Portuguese ambassador, the Marques de Fontes. Virtually nothing else is known about Scarlatti’s Roman period except that he left there, never to return, late in 1719. |

The year following he was ensconced in Portugal, and his life was half over. But not yet, incredibly, had he written even the first of those 555 exquisite keyboard sonatas on which his fame rests so securely. Nor would he until sometime after the death of his father in 1725, and one does not have to be a Freudian psychoanalyst to discern the overwhelm- ing parental influence in all of Domenico’s operas, cantatas, and assorted church music composed prior to the passing of the more celebrated Ales- sandro—forms he would eschew thereafter in favor of the keyboard sonata almost exclusively.

The terrible earthquake of 1755 destroyed the archives of the Portuguese King Joao V, but we are reasonably sure that Scarlatti spent the decade 1720-29 as his chapel-master and, simultaneously, as music- master to his daughter Maria Barbara. When the Princess married the Crown Prince Fernando of Spain, Scarlatti went with them to Madrid. As it turned out, the insane Felipe V would hold the Spanish throne for another twenty years, but Scarlatti was nevertheless given an honored place in the court and remained there uninterruptedly from then forward.

There is a stubborn annotative fiction to the effect that Scarlatti —

grew homesick towards the end and returned to his native Naples. Extant brochures of the old Scarlatti Society lend credence to this notion. Be- cause at least.one of the pieces herewith dates from the final grouping it is pertinent to note that the biographer Ralph Kirkpatrick has dispelled all doubts about the composer’s whereabouts in his twilight years: he died not in Italy but in his adopted homeland, and specifically in his house on the Calle de Leganitos in Madrid.

THE MUSIC-—Barely two decades before, in 1738 (when he was |

fifty-three), Scarlatti’s first collection of sonatas was published under the title Essercizi per Gravicembalo and dedicated to the King of Portugal as “compositions born under Your Majesty’s auspices, in the service of your deservingly fortunate daughter.” As much he might have said of the hundreds of sonatas that followed; the inference is that every last one of them was contrived for her delectation. Few employers ever have been so consistently a source of the highest inspiration; surely Maria Barbara was a most extraordinary lady.

The fascinating evolution of Scarlatti’s musical style beginning with the Essercizi is traced with infinite pains by Kirkpatrick in his great study (Princeton University Press, 1953), and no précis could hope to detail,

TAN aw =

let alone explain, the unceasing creative regeneration that was signaled by the appearance of these pieces. It is perhaps enough to recall the late Alfred Einsten’s uncharacteristic hyperbole in his summing-up of the Scarlatti sonata corpus—‘‘a precious possession of music, like a ring with a glistening stone.”

Until recently the chronological placement of the 555 works by the

nineteenth-century editor Alessandro Longo was accepted as standard, if .

not final, but Kirkpatrick’s assiduous scholarship has gained wide accept- ance for his entirely new and entirely different numbering. So that each sonata now bears a “K” number as well as an “L” number. For the recital herewith the corresponding designations are as follows, in order of performance: :

L. 457—K. 132—C major L. 217—K. 73, —C minor-major L. 82 —K. 471—G major L. 449—K. 27 —B minor L. 23 —K. 380—E major L. 483—K. 322—A major

L. 482—K. 389—D major

L. 238—K. 208—A major-C major L. 256—K. 247—C sharp minor L. 257—K. 206—E major

L. 352—K. 11 —C minor-C major L. 255—K. 515—C major.

This selection illustrates much of the mature Scarlatti’s fantastic re- sourcefulness of expression. ‘The opening L. 457 at once evokes the guitar aesthetic that can be discerned here and there in so many of the sonatas. L. 217 probably antedates the Essercizi; it is one of the few that bears dynamic markings but these are limited to echo effects. L. 82 is a stately Minuet that nevertheless demands extreme virtuosity in its many passages for crossed hands. L. 449 shows that the composer was as much Eusebius as Florestan; it is subdued and yet glowing with inner warmth and an almost Chopinesque poetry. L. 380 is a ceremonial ‘piece; Wanda Land- owska heard in it the “profane splendors” of a martial procession, with “the hammering of horses’ hoofs, the ringing of silver bits and the jingling of spurs.” L. 238 is flamenco translated into courtly terms. L. 256 is con- templative, with traces of Moorish influence. L. 257 invites programmatic speculation; Landowska heard it as “‘a little opera” about a woman and her lover who deserts her. The tender L. 352 is familiar as a staple of the piano encore repertory.

Appropriately, the closing L. 255 is a “fun” piece, full of the hilar- ious tricks and droll flourishes with which Scarlatti so often embellished, and so often disguised, his genius for achieving absolute perfection in miniature. Every great composer has given us multum in parvo once in a while, but the measure of this one is that he did it several hundred times over. |

THE ARTIST—Pianist Fou T’s’ong’s family background nurtured his artistic sensibilities. As a lecturer, his father taught at the Shanghai Acad- emy of Art, was a writer, critic and translator of French and English

classical literature. Music was part of the home life, and Fou Ts’ong, de-

veloping an early taste for western music via recordings, began his musical studies with Italian pianist-conductor Mario Paci at the age of ten years. He debuted in Shanghai as soloist in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and went on to Europe where he was a prize winner in the Polish Interna- tional Competition of 1955, winning a scholarship at the Warsaw Con- servatory.

The young artist’s London debut established him as a front rank piano personality. Among the accolades accorded him was the bold predic- tion: “Rubenstein’s successor!” Soon after his first recording appeared on Westminster, preceding a countrywide American concert tour which in- cluded appearances with the New York Philharmonic at famed Carnegie Hall. He was the first Chinese pianist to be soloist with the Philharmonic. His playing inspired this critical comment from the Post: “A performance

of European music that upheld the sternest Western standards and tra- ditions.”

The Piano used is a Bechstein Piano

PRODUCED BY DR. KURT LIST

MUSICAL PREPARATION: DR. HELMUT RIESSBERGER

ENGINEER: JOSEPH KAMYKOWSKI EDITOR: URSULA STENZ

MASTERING: PETER CURIEL LINER NOTES: JAMES LYONS Editor, The American Record Guide

COVER PHOTO: HERBERT COVER DESIGN: HARRY FARMLETT PRINTED IN U.S.A.

A PRODUCT OF WESTMINSTER RECORDING CO., INC. a subsidiary of ABC Records, Inc.

1330 Avenue of the Americas,

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Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 79-750635

This album was previously released as Westminster No. WST-17015