Search - Scarlatti, Scott Ross :: Scott Ross - Scarlatti Antholgie

Magnificent, controlled, and unprecedented

harpsikid | Newport Beach, CA | 09/24/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The title mostly sums up this collection, which is drawn from the much larger 34-CD complete recording of the sonatas. I should admit that what really prompted this review was my reading another review here with which I strongly disagree. As a twenty-four-year-old harpsichordist who has taken enough of an interest in 18th century Iberian keyboard music to have played through the entire Heugel edition of Scarlatti, the complete Rubio edition of Soler, and all the editions of Seixas I have been lucky enough to locate, I feel it's rather safe to say I'm familiar with the music, and I think Scott's performances on these recordings (and not) were really quite remarkable for a number of reasons, the least of which is that he was the first to record the complete oeuvre. Scott Ross was a wonderfully musical man, and this should be evident to any listener with even the remotest interest in harpsichord music. His embellishments in these recordings are always tasteful, his ornaments are always properly executed, and his tempi are always proper. Scott believed the sonatas had an organic quality about them--a sort of self-generated drive behind them--and I would very much agree. The sonatas never sound rushed, yet never lag. The slow pieces are played with sentiment, and the fast pieces are exciting while very much controlled. Indeed, if one had to sum up Scott's playing in a single word, I should think it would be "controlled."I must admit I write this with a bit of bias, for it's actually this performer who inspired me to make the transition from piano to harpsichord some six years ago, but I am certainly not excusing him for any atrocities in these recordings, because there simply are none. I think it's also important to add that I take a totally different approach to the sonatas myself--my tempi are almost always quite a bit faster than Scott's, and I have an overall more ferocious technique--so I am certainly not praising these recordings because of their similarities to my own playing. One really can't go wrong with this or any other Scott Ross recording. His technique is really very impressive, and his recordings are always very well produced. I should add that I'm something of a collector of Scarlatti recordings, so I have a great deal of other sources with which to compare his recordings, and still I find Scott's the best overall. I would recommend this smaller collection to anyone with even the slightest interest in Scarlatti, and feel myself that the complete edition is really an essential item to anyone who should like to come to fully know the music of this still understated composer. You will find yourself learning and being entertained all at once.(And you might try to play them, too. Some of the sonatas are completely wild, and really some of the most fun you can have on an instrument.) Thanks."

Great commuting music!

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 03/15/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's philistine of me, I know, to title this note the way I did. But I find that I keep this set in the car and often as not this is what I reach for when I commute. This 'anthologie' is taken from that huge and prohibitively expensive set of all the Scarlatti sonatas recorded by the late lamented Scott Ross. This set will do unless you're a real Scarlatti nut. The performances are uniformly limpid, phrased in a loving, unforced, musicianly way. Ross uses several equally beautiful-sounding harpsichords."