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Scarlatti: Harpsichord Sonatas / Gustav Leonhardt
The engineers can certainly take a bow for presenting a clean, warm sound from the copy of the Dulcken harpsichord used; there are some gritty roughnesses in Kk193 which may be only on my copy, but from the less pleasant, clangier timbre of the instrument in Kk52 (long and rambling, like an organ voluntary), this may have been recorded at a different session. A rousing hand, anyway, for Gustav Leonhardt. It's true that he's a bit jerky and impetuous in Kk3 (One with falling chromatic lines) and that his rubato in Kk185 may be thought rather much, but once settled into his stride he produces some splendid performances. TI would instance his vitality in the wittily unexpected Kkl84, the brilliant Kk239 (with its suggestion of castanets), his deliciously springheeled Kk209 and the exciting Kk191.
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
The engineers can certainly take a bow for presenting a clean, warm sound from the copy of the Dulcken harpsichord used; there are some gritty roughnesses in Kk193 which may be only on my copy, but from the less pleasant, clangier timbre of the instrument in Kk52 (long and rambling, like an organ voluntary), this may have been recorded at a different session. A rousing hand, anyway, for Gustav Leonhardt. It's true that he's a bit jerky and impetuous in Kk3 (One with falling chromatic lines) and that his rubato in Kk185 may be thought rather much, but once settled into his stride he produces some splendid performances. TI would instance his vitality in the wittily unexpected Kkl84, the brilliant Kk239 (with its suggestion of castanets), his deliciously springheeled Kk209 and the exciting Kk191.
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
$17.99
Scarlatti: Harpsichord Sonatas / Gustav Leonhardt—
$17.99
Description
The engineers can certainly take a bow for presenting a clean, warm sound from the copy of the Dulcken harpsichord used; there are some gritty roughnesses in Kk193 which may be only on my copy, but from the less pleasant, clangier timbre of the instrument in Kk52 (long and rambling, like an organ voluntary), this may have been recorded at a different session. A rousing hand, anyway, for Gustav Leonhardt. It's true that he's a bit jerky and impetuous in Kk3 (One with falling chromatic lines) and that his rubato in Kk185 may be thought rather much, but once settled into his stride he produces some splendid performances. TI would instance his vitality in the wittily unexpected Kkl84, the brilliant Kk239 (with its suggestion of castanets), his deliciously springheeled Kk209 and the exciting Kk191.
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
-- Gramophone [4/1980]
