SCARLATTI KEYBOARD SONATAS – INGENUITY AND DELIGHT
James Brawn in Recital Volume 3
MSR Classics MS 1829
Following the nine discs in his survey of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, British-born musician James Brawn is keeping himself occupied with a new entry for his ‘In Recital’ series on the MSR Classics label. The first in the set, recorded in 2012, featured some Bach, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition the main work. Three years later came the second in the series, a double album with a fuller scope through Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Gershwin.
This year, the third of the series has appeared and the focus is pretty concentrated on Domenico Scarlatti. Brawn takes us through 21 of the 555 in the (so far?) accepted canon, two of them revenants from his 2015 marathon: K. 159 in C Major (La Caccia) and K. 380 in E Major (Le Cortege). Many of us would have made our first acquaintance with this composer through the 25 Sonate per clavicembalo edited by Alessandro Longo in a Ricordi publication that I came across in the late 1950s. Brawn plays nine of the sonatas in that volume, including the two referred to above from his ‘In Recital Volume 2’ double-album.
Tagged on at the end, he presents a small-scale sonata by Domenico’s father Alessandro – the shortest track on the disc at 1’33” – and a more substantial sonata in G minor by Pater Scarlatti’s friend, Johann Adolph Hasse. A bit of a problem is the uncertain provenance of the Alessandro Scarlatti D minor Sonata, labelled Arioso. The piece is two lines in its substance, as are many of Domenico’s works: a simple tune above a walking bass. Brawn repeats the first half but not the second, although not much is gained by hearing any of this bagatelle twice.
The Hasse work is often listed as an attribution to the composer, possibly because the composer’s other sonatas are generally not stand-alone movements like this Largo. Still, it has a more mobile bass line than the elder Scarlatti’s piece and actually gravitates towards a wealth of right-hand thirds. Brawn plays repeats of both halves and gives us a gentle, measured account of a pre-Domenico piece that a reasonably competent pianist could probably negotiate successfully at sight.
As for the CD’s major consideration, Brawn opens with No. 1 in the Kirkpatrick numbering system, a D minor here subtitled Toccata. Well, it moves briskly and you come across some of those passages where both hands touch the same note in quick succession (bars 7, 8,11, 15,17, 26 and 27) but it’s more a toccata in the sense of rapidity of manipulation – and Brawn is excellently even-handed throughout – rather than the usual Baroque idea of a series of quick flurries and contrasting sections.
Another D minor follows, K. 9 and it’s one from the Longo 25 Sonate collection, here named Pastorale, which must refer to the musette moments at the end of both halves. This is a transparent view of the work with Brawn treating it as a bit of an amble but adding a sudden pianistic interest to the second half by semi-arpeggiating the left-hand chords across bars 27 to 32 and allowing himself room to breathe after some semiquaver runs; not that any of these raise the interpretation’s placid temperature.
We’re still in the minor (B) with K. 27, which is a fine exercise in hand-over technique, where the left hand plays top note in a chord. This is reliably achieved by Brawn who efficiently skewers these isolated notes, at the same time giving some crotchet weight to notes beginning semiquaver chains of four in passages following the main gauche uppermost bars. The style is outwardly calm, with an undercurrent of mobile gravity.
Once again, we revert to D minor for K. 32, yclept Aria. This one-page sonata has a first half of 8 bars, a second section of 16 and it barely modulates: all the Cs in it but four (in a passing flirtation with F Major) are sharpened. The work proceeds with gravity, a slow minuet, but imbued with grace and without melodrama. Sticking with the same tonality, Brawn next presents K. 34, Larghetto. This is a more progressive minuet, with a first half of twelve bars which modulates to A minor, the conclusion to both halves notable for a flattened supertonic which, in this harmonic context, is a slight shock to the predicting system.
At Track 6, we hit A Major, K.96, subtitled La Caccia and another Longo album favourite. As even small-scale Scarlatti enthusiasts know, this sonata has a variety of tests: repeated notes expressly marked Mutandi i deti, 18 instances of rapid left-hand over, double octave passages in both hands, a splash of Tremolo di sopra, and some pauses that offer no respite. I felt a slight dip in bars 26, 28, 30 and 32 where Brawn appears to offer a small hesitation before the demi-semiquaver duplets in each bar; it’s as if he’s determined to observe the letter of the law and give the upward flourishes extra space to resonate. Also, he sustains the tenor A through bars 103 to 108 the first time round but doesn’t bother in the repeat, following the pattern written at the same place in the second half where the Ds are struck at the beginning of each bar. The work is buoyant enough, if dynamically restrained.
Would you believe, we return to D minor for K. 141? It sports the title Toccata with some relevance because it’s in part a study in rapidly repeated right-hand notes that features in the Longo collection although there’s no indication in my edition that you have to change your fingers while repeating those groups of six notes (Longo prescribes an alteration of 3-2-1, which I suspect Brawn follows). It also features some of those brusque left-hand chords which involve both 4th and 5th above the bass note, a strident rasgueado suggestion that Puyana delivered with incredible punch. And this piece is also distinguished by its requirement for both hands to cross in both halves. This pianist appears to miss nothing, even if the repeated notes sometimes seem on the verge of disappearing.
The A minor K. 149 is new to me and a delight for its inventiveness as Scarlatti leaves his first idea alone in the second half and deals with a figure that presents as an adjunct in the first segment. The references back to prior material demonstrate the felicity and flexibility of the composer’s thought but the sonata radiates that extraordinary combination of power and elegance that distinguished the best of these pieces.
Another favourite from Longo’s album is the K. 159, which also has here the sobriquet La Caccia and is a much easier piece to handle than K. 96 in D Major. Brawn follows some performers in omitting one of bars 14, 15 and 16 in the sonata’s first part, then one of bars 53, 54 or 55 later on, although I can’t find an edition where this liberty is edited in. He also imitates those who repeat the first half’s top note tonic triad elements that are written in all editions I can find, doing the same across bars 18 to 20 in the second half at bars 57 to 59 which I can’t find anywhere even if it is an obvious act of balance. For all that, this is an engaging negotiation of one of the composer’s most attractive keyboard canters.
Speaking of Puyana, one of the sonatas that he transformed into a percussive nightmare for the rest of us is the A minor K. 175 with its plethora of dissonant left hand chords. Brawn splays these at the opening, once again suggesting a flamenco guitar attack but his reading is controlled and light in dynamic; this lets you relish the offered contrast between determined arpeggio material at the start and an unexpectedly gentle bounce at the rapid left-hand cross that comes out of nowhere at bar 85 to provide some contrasting bouts of light-hearted euphony.
The following A Major K. 208 is labelled Cantabile (in my edition, Adagio e cantabile) and is another unknown, moving from slow crotchets, through syncopation, to semiquaver runs in its first sentence, all over a steadily insistent crotchet bass in 4/4 time. It does have a singing quality although on paper the upper line looks jerky; another welcome discovery. A further A Major, K 209, is partnered with this gentle lyric; a complete opposite in atmosphere as it’s a chattering non-stop (initially) linear dialogue, mainly in two voices but succumbing to the necessity for chords to embroider a pretty breathless impetus. Here is some delicious playing, especially in the last 17 bars of each half where the rattling along settles into a pleasurable comfort zone while staying in one uninterrupted major tonality.
I found the Sonata in E minor K. 291 mechanical, in spite of Brawn’s vigorous interpretation which dealt with some ordinary material by bathing it in dynamic contrasts. An insistence on its opening pattern of four quavers followed by six crotchets, allied to a predictable modulation sequence reminded me of Browning’s mocking, ‘Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!’ where the note-spinning leads nowhere in the end. You might say something similar about the next, K. 322 in A Major except that the primary subject melds into further material with particular ease in a work that is essentially a simple two-line construct (and the lower a functional grave procession of subsidiary minims), graced with a stretch of nine uplifting final bars in each half that seem to come through on its own recognizances. Brawn handles this work with a muted determination that still finds the benignity across those codas to each section.
Bouree is how this pianist typifies K. 377 in B minor and it does have lashings of that driving bass mobility you can find in some of Bach’s works using that form. Once again, this is a two-line (almost completely) sonata but blessed with a bass line having a mind of its own with the occasionally-exercised ability to take over the running. The pace is steady, not inclined to give way to any inept dancers and an ideal sample of Brawn’s clarity of articulation, thanks to the absence of any deadening sustaining pedal.
Having reached K. 380 in E Major, we come across one of Scarlatti’s most famous sonatas and a favourite of every aspiring pianist. Brawn gives it an aggressive edge at the start, the ornaments in bars 2, 4, 6 and 8 a tad more martellato than usual. In fact, many another player comes to this work as to a fairly slow minuet, milking those horns of Elfland that begin in bars 19 to 21 for as many Romantic atmospherics as possible. This musician gives a suggestion of echoes but never faintly blowing, and he ploughs through the ‘working’ bars 50-56 at full steam without pulling any punches – an approach he in fact proposes in the first statement of the piece. It’s called Le Cortege on this CD: taken literally, it’d have to be being performed at one of your no-nonsense military funerals.
A fair few of us would know K. 430 in D Major from Tommasini’s ballet of 1917 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: seven Scarlatti sonatas arranged under the title of The Good-Humoured Ladies. It sounds less of a flurry on the piano, in keeping with the direction on my score: Non presto ma a tempo di ballo. This reading is active enough but measured, in line with the frequent moments of rhythmic and harmonic insistence (bars 19-26, 30-38, 72-80, 84-92) and an inbuilt, frequent ‘kick’ as in the right hand’s first three notes.
Brawn goes a touch more affective for the Sonata in F minor K. 466 which has an actively participating left hand. The construct has traces of a two-part invention format, although the right hand introduces new triplet matter that is not handed to the bass until the opening of the sonata’s second part. But this musician sees the opportunity for added sensitivity and inserts small pauses before hitting the first note/chord of several bars. So it becomes a small-scale, soulful vignette with its own brand of melancholy and a reminder that this composer wasn’t ever just a dry figure, playing Toccatas, stately at the harpsichord.
Le Cortege is again the name appended to K 491 in D Major; it’s now plain that this cortege is probably referring to a stately progress in court from one room to another; rather like the movement of Prince Andrew from Royal Lodge to his new two-up/two-down residence in Luton. This also is a well-known work, notable for its triple call to arms in the opening bar and two abrupt changes of key – in the first half from a dominant-suggesting A Major to a momentary C Major setting; in the second, after the same A Major halt, an abrupt switch to F Major. Of particular note are Brawn’s parallel semiquaver thirds at the end to each half of the work – admirably even and crisp underneath the legato.
Second-last in this celebration of the great keyboard master-composer is the Pastorale in C Major, K. 513, which appears in the much-afore-mentioned 25 Sonate edited by Longo.. Brawn plays through the opening saraband deftly enough, negotiating handily the change in speed that comes with the bass G octave drones, and we enter an aristocrat’s view of the bucolics at their dance. He doesn’t repeat this set of pages but launches into the concluding 3/8 Presto with enthusiasm and does repeat that section with only a slight ponderousness across bars 47 to 49 for inexplicable reasons.
Finishing in style, Brawn plays the quicksilver E Major K. 531 which is another element in the Longo collection. He calls it Tarantella. Well, it is and it isn’t; the metre’s right but the material is too well-bred to set the piazza (or plaza) on a roar. It is given an admirable lightness, noticeable particularly in a well-positioned dynamic level for the left hand which has a significant role on the first page in sustaining the vaulting nature of this sonata’s arpeggio-rich main theme. The headlong progress is halted by several fermate but the communication of Scarlatti’s well-being and felicity sends us off, after this final expert demonstration, more than content with Brawn’s informed expertise.
O'Connell the Music 