Domenico Scarlatti: Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 8

Featuring

Christoph Ullrich
Domenico Scarlatti

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Instruments

Queen Maria Bárbara, Scarlatti's employer, owned a diverse collection of instruments including harpsichords and fortepianos, suggesting Scarlatti was familiar with and used various keyboard types.

Instruments

Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Florentine instrument maker, developed the 'gravicembalo col pian e forte' around 1700, an instrument that could play loud and soft, and was a predecessor to the modern piano.

Composition History

The two main collections of Scarlatti's sonatas ended up in Venice and Parma via the estate of the famous castrato Farinelli, a friend of Scarlatti who worked at the Spanish court.

Performer Biography

Christoph Ullrich, the pianist on this recording, is undertaking a project to record all 555 of Domenico Scarlatti's surviving harpsichord sonatas on a modern Steinway concert grand.

Compositional Technique

Two of Scarlatti's sonatas (K. 287 and 288) are explicitly marked 'per organo' and feature specific indications for manual changes and organ-typical echo effects.

Composer Biography

Domenico Scarlatti's 555 surviving harpsichord sonatas exist only in manuscript copies, mostly made by his student Antonio Soler for Queen Maria Bárbara of Spain.

Composition History

Scarlatti dedicated his 30 'Esercizi' to King João V of Portugal in 1738 as thanks for his knighthood, and these works are considered precursors to his later sonatas.