This week we’re celebrating the birthday of the great Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti, who was born on October 26, 1685. 1685 was a good year: Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handle were also born that year. Scarlatti wrote 555 sonatas, only a small part of which were published during his lifetime. Vladimir Horowitz and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli were wonderful (and very different) interpreters. Most of Scarlatti’s sonatas were written for harpsichord. We’ll hear four of them played on the modern piano (by the Italian pianist Mauro Bertoli, the American pianist and composer Heather Schmidt, the young Chinese pianist Jie Chen, and Mauro Bertoli again), and then on fortepiano by David Schrader. To listen, please click here.
We would be amiss not to mention Niccolò Paganini, who was also born this week in 1782. Listen here as Albert Markov plays Moses, Variations on One String. Exquisite.
October 26, 2009
This week we’re celebrating the birthday of the great Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti, who was born on October 26, 1685. 1685 was a good year: Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handle were also born that year. Scarlatti wrote 555 sonatas, only a small part of which were published during his lifetime. Vladimir Horowitz and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli were wonderful (and very different) interpreters. Most of Scarlatti’s sonatas were written for harpsichord. We’ll hear four of them played on the modern piano (by the Italian pianist Mauro Bertoli, the American pianist and composer Heather Schmidt, the young Chinese pianist Jie Chen, and Mauro Bertoli again), and then on fortepiano by David Schrader. To listen, please click here.
We would be amiss not to mention Niccolò Paganini, who was also born this week in 1782. Listen here as Albert Markov plays Moses, Variations on One String. Exquisite.