United Kingdom Scarlatti: Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord). Queen Elizabeth Corridor, London, 14.10.2022. (MB)
Scarlatti – Sonatas in F, Kk.296; in F, Kk.297; in F minor, Kk.466; in F sharp minor, Kk.25; in G minor, Kk.12; in C minor, Kk.11; in F, Kk.6; in F minor, Kk.19; in F, Kk.106; in F, Kk.107; in D minor, Kk.552; in D minor, Kk.553; in C minor, Kk.116; in G, Kk.470; in G, Kk.471; in E minor, Kk.263; in E, Kk.264; in A, Kk.24; in D minor, Kk.32
One of many first skilled live shows I heard — it might even have been the primary — was of Scarlatti sonatas on the harpsichord, on the suggestion of my childhood piano trainer, with whom I realized a great few alongside the best way. I can not now keep in mind who the harpsichordist was and am not even certain of the venue; oddly, I believe it might have been Rotherham’s Civic Theatre slightly than the Arts Centre (a part of an exquisite brutalist advanced, since demolished, that included the city’s Central Library from the place I borrowed a lot of my first books and, later, first musical cassettes and scores). Scarlatti loomed comparatively giant within the early repertoire I used to be sometimes allowed to check out on my trainer’s spinet. As quickly, although, as I began organ classes in my teenagers, my adoration for Bach considerably crowded out contemporaries. Not that I’ve or had little interest in Scarlatti, Handel, Rameau, Couperin, and lots of others, however I’m fairly certain I’ve by no means been to an all-Scarlatti recital since. I do not know how I’d react as we speak to what I heard as a schoolboy in Rotherham — I assume I’m not imagining the entire thing — however I can say that this immersive expertise from Mahan Esfahani, carried out with out an interval, a lot of it with out as a lot as a break between items, was fairly a journey on which to be taken.
Over ninety minutes or so, with a few bonus D minor sonatas as encores, Esfahani’s choice coated a broad vary, while nonetheless in fact solely encompassing a small proportion of Scarlatti’s output on this style. (One would possibly fairly go as far as to name the Scarlatti sonata near a style in itself. It doesn’t spring out of nowhere, nor does it result in nowhere, however few if any binary varieties are fairly prefer it.) From the outset, we knew that this was music internalised, in order that these performances, and not using a trace of the wilful, may in a constructive sense be like no others. Freedom was not licence; slightly, it supplied a guiding thread that enabled a specific sequence of works to emerge in a specific approach, with contemporary performances that will have been in any other case in a distinct order, not to mention a distinct day. For example, within the first pair of works, in F main, harmonic rhythm that was allied to, but by no means dictated by, metre was the body for a relish within the composer’s obstinacy and graciousness alike: aristocratic in the most effective sense. Because the recital progressed, repeated figures, sequences scales, ornaments and different constructing blocks emerged as attribute, but diversified, nothing so mundane as a cliché. The phantasm of dynamic distinction was conjured — besides, in fact, that it was not at all times an phantasm.
A captivating sequence of minor-key works communicated a correct sense of Affekt, fairly distinct from later tonal understandings, associative or in any other case. The place I as a teen had been tempted to the maudlin, right here this music was dropped at life, with none of the irritating, nonsensical reductionism of many so-called ‘Baroque’ musicians who would declare all music of the interval is a dance. It is a world with as many choices as ours, and so too it sounded right here, while making the sum of these choices greater than the sum of its elements. Continuities and discontinuities, and the best way they match collectively, supplied right here and elsewhere courtly dignity and attract, and a superb sense of caprice. Crossing of arms, leaning appoggiaturas, agogic accents, fanfares that spoke of a world past the keyboard, and magical moments of suspense expertly punctured led in direction of a last sequence of sonatas that inbuilt gravity and abandon, tempting us to assume each the final, till a successor twisted the screw somewhat additional. One thing darker, mysteriously Mediterranean characterised the ultimate programmed work, the right response to its predecessor’s abandon. Programming and efficiency labored as one.
Mark Berry