Scarlatti: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 8 [CD]

Soyeon Lee's (Yi So-Yeon's) contribution to the Naxos complete Scarlatti sonatas is outstanding. K 466 is one of the Scarlatti canon, and I'd place Lee's performance between the cold, morgue-like performance of Dubravka Tomsic and the grandiose version by Emilia Fadini that evokes the chain-dragging ghosts of early operas by D. Scarlatti's father, Alessandro. But Lee's performance is not dull. The hard beat and delayed action of the trills in the second half of the sonata really bring out the 2/3 crossrhythmic edge when it counts most.

Not every sonata works. Lee does not provide enough space between phrases in the question-and-answer coda to K 462.

K 87 is a chestnut, but Lee's performance shows a firm grasp of line.

The blowout for me was K 96. In contrast to the driven hammering of Pletnev and his master Axelrod, Lee plays with fast-tempo JOY. It's her mastery of touch that is most surprising in Lee's debut album. She uses it well to make the syncopation of lightweight K 382 move.

As always in this series, the artist's choice of sonatas is dictated by the powers that be at Naxos, so Lee can be forgiven for forgettable performances of several sonatas like K 181 on this disc. It's too bad that Naxos will unlikely issue another Scarlatti album in this series with Lee playing because she may be the most talented performer of the series to date.

I eagerly await each new release in Naxos's series of the complete keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, but this latest CD, volume 8 in the series, was special. It features a young Korean-born pianist, Soyeon Lee, making her recording debut and an auspicious beginning it is indeed. Ms. Lee has won a number of major competitions, including the 2004 concert Artists Guild International Competition and the Cleveland International Piano Competition. Clearly, these awards were well-deserved. Ms. Lee plays with a light introspective touch. Her playing is even and measured in the runs and arpeggios which are ever-present in Scarlatti. She uses the pedal beautifully in these works to create a highly atmospheric but not over-done effect. Her reading of the music tends towards the introspective and the romantic. Her performance was expressive, if subdued. If the quirkiness and idiosyncracies of some of Scarlatti's compositions did not come through fully, this was more than compensated for by the musical, thoughtful quality of Ms. Lee's playing. Although my main purpose in listening to the Naxos series is to hear more Scarlatti, this was a rare CD because it drew my attention equally to Ms. Lee's pianism.

For those new to the series, Naxos is in the midst of recording the complete sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) on what will be a lengthy series of CDs each recorded by a different pianist. Scarlatti composed over 550 of these miniatures for the Spanish court late in his life. The pieces are a joy in their virtuosity, inventiveness, Spanish rhythms, throbbing guitar-like passages, and moments of depth, lyricism and reflection. The Naxos cycle offers the opportunity to get to know these works beyond the small handful usually included on single issues. More importantly, the cycle offers exposure to a number of deserving young pianists, including Ms Lee, and it gives the listener the opportunity to hear different styles and approaches to this inexhaustible music. Hearing different artists play Scarlatti on the piano has helped me sharpen my listening skills for music that I have loved for many years.

In this recital, Ms. Lee plays 13 Scarlatti sonatas, some of which were familiar to me while some were new. The works range from the early, K.87 to the late K. 496 and include eight major key and five minor key sonatas. The selections give a better cross-section of the range of Scarlatti's writing that would be possible if the recordings were done chronologically. (The chronology of these works is, in any event, far from certain.)

To start with a familiar work, Ms. Lee takes the Sonata in C major K. 420 quickly, rhythmically and lightly. This is a march-like piece full of oddities but under Ms. Lee's hands it turns into a work of gracefulness. There is more than one way to interpret this music. To take another well-known work, Ms. Lee gives a lively rendition of the Sonata in D major, K. 96, emphasizing the passages of repeated notes and the many arpeggios. Her playing is both spirited and highly pianistic.

On the whole, I liked M. Lee's playing best in the slower, more melancholy works in this collection, including the Sonata in F minor, K. 466, the early and pensive Sonata in B minor K.87, the G minor sonata, K. 426, and the F minor sonata K. 462. Ms. Lee plays reflectively, introspectively, and plaintively in these works. In the faster, livelier works, such as the C major sonata, the D major sonata, and the B-flat major sonata K. 441, Ms. Lee handles the repeated notes, wide skips, long runs, and plunging arpeggios with full expression and technical command. She offers a highly musical and thought-out reading of Scarlatti.

Those who love Scarlatti and those collecting the Naxos series will want to hear this disk. For those just coming to Scarlatti, this CD, featuring beautiful playing by a pianist to watch, is a fine place to start.

Robin Friedman

It has been two long years since the last issue in this ongoing series from Naxos which, when finished, will have recorded -- on the piano -- all 555 of Scarlatti's sonatas (or, as he called them, 'Essercizi'), each CD recorded by a different pianist. So far we have had recordings by Jeno Jändö, Benjamin Frith, Konstantin Scherbakov, Evgeni Zarafiants, Michael Lewin, Beatrice Long and Eteri Andjaparidze. All of these are fine, although I was less impressed with that of Ms Long than with the others. And each is different. One could argue that it might have been better for Naxos to have had one pianist record all the sonatas, as Scott Ross did on harpsichord before his untimely death, but Naxos's approach has value, not the least of which is the opportunity to hear how differently these protean works can be played.

The Scarlatti sonatas are like snowflakes; each is symmetrical but utterly unique and thus discernibly different from its fellow sonatas. They seem alike on superficial inspection but closer scrutiny reveals the differences which make one all the more admiring of Scarlatti's art. One can never exhaust the process of discovering delights in these works.

Soyeon Lee is a twenty-something Korean pianist not previously known to me (as has been the case with several of the other pianists in this series). She is a graduate of the Juilliard School, having studied with Jerome Lewenthal and Robert McDonald and is a multiple prizewinner. Her playing has delicacy and poetry but is capable of power and crisp articulation. It is clear that she has thought carefully about every note she plays here. One can detect an intellect guiding her pristine technique. She is given some of the more obscure sonatas to record, but is rewarded by getting one of the most familiar of them all, the one in D major K96 which, surely not by chance, falls precisely at the center of her recital. I compared her playing of this familiar work with recordings by John Browning, Vladimir Horowitz and Alexis Weissenberg. (I would have compared it with that of Mikhail Pletnev but, darn it, that CD is on loan to a friend.) Her way with this sonata stands up nicely in those direct comparisons. Her tone is rounded, her phrasing more legato than some but counterbalanced by a keen rhythmic sense so that the line does not become soggy. Among the less familiar sonatas I was impressed by the suppressed but real emotion in K466 in F minor and by the joyous brilliance in K101 in A major. (It is of note that the symmetry of Scarlatti's works is mirrored in the arrangement of this recital which begins and ends with sonatas in A major.)

This issue is a keeper. And Soyeon Lee is a young pianist at the beginning of a career to watch.

Scott Morrison