Scarlatti: Sonatas

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MS-802 STEREO

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‘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
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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,

New York, New York 10019

Library of Congress Catalog
Card No. 79-750635

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