Composer: Domenico Scarlatti
Performer: Michael Lewin
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Naxos
Catalogue: 8553067
Release: 1999
Size: 285 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Keyboard Sonata K492 in D major
02. Keyboard Sonata K3 in A minor
03. Keyboard Sonata K32 in D minor
04. Keyboard Sonata in D major, K. 33 / L.424 / P.130
05. Keyboard Sonata K208 in A major
06. Keyboard Sonata K209 in A major
07. Keyboard Sonata K20 in E major
08. Keyboard Sonata K98 in E minor
09. Keyboard Sonata K27 in B minor
10. Keyboard Sonata K436 in D major
11. Keyboard Sonata K141 in D minor
12. Keyboard Sonata K213 in D minor
13. Keyboard Sonata K14 in G major
14. Keyboard Sonata K322 in A major
15. Keyboard Sonata K109 in A minor
16. Keyboard Sonata K146 in G major
17. Keyboard Sonata K39 in A major
18. Keyboard Sonata K481 in F minor
19. Keyboard Sonata K517 in D minor
Michael Lewin is an American pianist as dexterous and assured as he’s audacious. Here there’s no sense of ‘studio’ caution but only of liberating and dazzling music-making, live and on the wing. Kk492 in D could hardly provide a more brilliant curtain-raiser, and in Kk3 in A minor (the one where Scarlatti’s impish humour offers the musical equivalent of someone slipping on a banana skin) Lewin’s playing positively brims over with high spirits. The D major Sonata, Kk33, is all thrumbing guitars and bursts of sunlight and in Kk141, with its cascades of repeated notes, Lewin even gives Martha Argerich a run for her money. There’s a no less appealing balm and musical quality in the more restrained numbers such as Kk32 in D minor and Kk208 in A, though the recital comes to a suitably ebullient conclusion with Kk517 in D minor which is here like a river in full spate.
The New York-based recordings are suitably lively. Not even the most persistent lover of Scarlatti on the harpsichord could accuse Michael Lewin of an absence of the necessary glitter, panache and stylistic awareness.