Scarlatti - Sonatas - Hewitt

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstanding Scarlatti

This is yet another outstanding disc of Baroque keyboard music from Angela Hewitt.  There are many fine Scarlatti recordings, but this stands with the very best of them, I think.

Hewitt has chosen sixteen of the 555 sonatas and has arranged them into an interesting and varied programme.  I think it is telling that she begins with a minor-key sonata (Kk9, in D minor) which is contemplative and very beautiful.  This sets the tone of the disc, in that Hewitt, as always, has thought deeply about every bar of each of these pieces and there is a thoughtful feel to the disc which really brings out the depth and individuality in each sonata.  There's still plenty of playful zip when appropriate and it's anything but solemn and turgid (Kk29 in D really zings along, for example) but the sense that it all really means something is always there.  It's fascinating to compare Hewitt's style with Alexandre Tharaud, whose Scarlatti on the piano I also love.  His interpretations seem to me to have a lighter, more playful air somehow; they are equally enjoyable but shed a different light on Scarlatti's music.

Hewitt's playing throughout is superb.  She is technically brilliant, of course, (which anyone tacking these pieces needs to be) but she also has a deep sense of Baroque music which is probably partly instinctive, but also comes of  years deep study and love of the music of the period.  She has the understanding to use rubato and ornamentation to really make sense of the music without overlaying it with grand Romantic gestures (as Pletnev does, for example).  I think she is unsurpassed in the Baroque repertoire, even by greats like Perahia and Schiff, and for me her recordings of Couperin, Rameau and, of course, Bach are in a class of their own on the piano.  This belongs in that magnificent class.

Quite simply, this is superb.  It's great music, magnificently played and beautifully recorded, with very thoughtful, scholarly and interesting notes.  Recommended in the warmest terms.