Home listening - Scarlatti on a Steinway, a Rameau marathon, and all things polyphonic

The Guardian 0

Federico Colli captures the full vitality of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, while Steven Devine proves an ideal guide to Rameau

• Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), gifted son of the marginally less dazzling Alessandro, wrote some 555 keyboard sonatas. Not much is known about the order or, given the frequent travels of this peripatetic composer, the place of their creation. In Sonatas Volume 1 (Chandos), pianist Federico Colli has grouped 16 under four headings: The Power of Illusion, Live Happily!, The Return to Order and Enchantment and Prayer. Without pinning them down too specifically in terms of the music, these “chapters”, as the pianist calls them, work well. Colli’s virtuosity copes easily with the sonatas’ fiendish runs, snaps and awkward trills, capturing the Spanish (as in KK 492 in D), Italian, folk and dances influences that give these short, often curious pieces such flavour, wit and vitality. They sound pretty good on a Steinway Model D concert grand.

• The Complete Solo Keyboard Works of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) (Resonus), an exhaustive achievement by harpsichordist Steven Devine, runs to three CDs – enough suites and pièces de clavecin for most tastes to last a lifetime. The set includes the composer’s own arrangement of his “ballet héroïque”, Les Indes galantes (which in three tracks requires a second pair of hands, those of harpsichordist Robin Bigwood). Devine is a superb musical guide – varied, expressive, technically agile – but he has provided, too, helpful and clear programme notes on the stylistic challenges of this music. It may not have quite the same pizzazz as D Scarlatti, but its powers of expression run deep. You won’t find a better exponent than Devine.