Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exhilarating performances enhanced by intimate sound quality, 30 Aug 2001
By A Customer
This double CD is as good as you will get - not just of Scarlatti, but classical piano music in general. Domenico Scarlatti has to be one of the most underrated composers ever - his music has a technical brilliance which not only operates at an intellectual level but also goes straight to the soul. His music has life and vibrancy and a real sense of fun, as well as huge variety and innovation - over 500 sonatas and never the same, never formulaic. This selection by Pletnev is by no means picking "the best" sonatas, for there are many more which deserve to be listened to just as much. However, the selection is well made and does justice to Scarlatti's music. The sound quality is breathtaking - this is not a recording of a distant piano in a concert hall; it is as though Pletnev is there in your own living room and playing just for you. The performances are superb - Pletnev adds a depth and emotion to pieces which other pianists all too easily render somewhat drily and mechanically - it is not just transferring pieces from the harpsichord to the piano but displaying their brilliance in an entirely new light. These are pieces to listen to again and again and again (and you will get more out of them each time). It should leave you wanting more of Scarlatti - if so, you could do worse than the Naxos complete keyboard sonata recordings - this is still coming out (and they are only up to volume 3 out of over 30 so far!), but volume 3 is exquisite.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary playing of Iberian musical gems, 16 Sep 2003
Scarlatti's sonatas rarely run more than 4 or 5 minutes each; there are literally hundreds of them. Yet they contain some exquisitely beautiful and dramatically powerful music that has kept them in the pianistic repertoire for two centuries. Some of the greatest pianists of the 20th Century have recorded them -- Horowitz, Schiff, Perahia to name only three. Thus the ever-controversial Pletnev enters the fray with some stiff competition, but his two-disc selection is a triumph: exhilarating, moving, satisfying. Not only is the sound quality just about the best I have ever heard on CD, but the selection of the music is eclectic, many sonatas not appearing on any of the discs by Mikhail's illustrious forebears. [It is said that when Pletnev arrived for the recording sessions, he wouldn't tell his producer and engineers which sonatas he intended to play, but just "leafed through" the manuscript and said "this one next". They were recorded in two or three marathon sessions, all at a single take.] The Gramaphone magazine raved about these discs, and after listening to only 4 or 5 of the 30+ sonatas in this collection, it is easy to see why. Pletnev's technical brilliance is legendary, and he turns that to these sonatas with remarkable skill and sensitivity. Anyone serious about keyboard music should treat him/herself to these wonderful CDs. It is hard to imagine them being bettered.
Incidentally, listening to these discs, one is prompted to ponder the abilities of Scarlatti's client/dedicatee of the sonatas, Princess Maria Barbara of the Spanish Court: she must have been a player of the most prodigious ability -- maybe even up to Pletnev's standard.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant playing, but . . ., 17 April 2007
Mikhail Pletnev's Scarlatti is like Glenn Gould's Mozart: brilliant, imaginative musicianship which bears no relation whatever to the original intentions of the composer. It's up to each individual listener to make up his or her mind whether they like it. I do enjoy listening to many of Pletnev's interpretations on these discs, but on the whole I prefer Perahia in this repertoire.
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