He has captured the click of castanets, the strumming of guitars, the thud of muffled dreams, the harsh better wail of Gypsy lament, the overwhelming gaiety of the village band, and above all, the wiry tension of the Spanish dance. --Ralph Kirkpatrick, harpsichordist and Scarlatti biographer Quite frankly, it's pure luck that any of Domenico Scarlatti's beautiful music survived at all. ********************** Ivo Pogorelich, piano Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) Scarlatti: Sonaten Deutsche Grammophon, 1992 ********************** The original manuscripts of his famous harpsichord sonatas were discarded upon his death, and if it weren't for his wife who had seen to it that his work was copied, his entire oeuvre would likely have disappeared down the memory hole. Worse, even those copies were ignored for more than a century. Scarlatti was born into an extremely musical family in Italy, and he was a startlingly talented harpsichordist. But it wasn't until he left Italy to be ...
"The study of the history of music and the hearing of masterworks of different epochs will speediest of all cure you of vanity and self-adoration."