Search - Domenico Scarlatti, Elaine Comparone :: Scarlatti: The Cat's Fugue & Sonatas for Solo Harpsichord

Scarlatti for the hard rock fan

Bradley P. Lehman | Dayton, VA USA | 05/11/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"First off, since the Amazon page's list is incomplete, here's what's on this disc: the sonatas in F minor, K 239/L 281; F minor, K 187/L 285; F minor, K 183/L 473; B minor, K 27/L 449; B minor, K 197/L 174; B minor, K 409/L 150; F# minor, K 25/L 481; D major, K 45/L 265; D major, K 118/L 122; G minor (Cat's Fugue), K 30/L 499; G minor, K 12/L 489; C major, K 340/L 105; G major, K 201/L 129; E minor, K 233/L 467; Bb major, K 545/L 500; D minor, K 213/L 108; D minor, K 517/L 266. These are given in extraordinarily steady performances, fast tempos, and clear recorded sound. Now, how is it as a musical experience? Really it depends what you're looking for as a listener. Comparone plays to the bottom of the keys with a firm touch, often to the point of driving the jacks loudly into the rail. Metric values are exactly as they appear on the page, and the notes have an inhuman evenness to them. For large sections or for entire pieces, Comparone picks a single articulation and delivers it consistently; her expressive contrasts come from occasional changes of manual rather than from varying her touch or pointing the rhythm. Her hands are exactly together: no rubato or subtle staggering of attacks. The music is presented in huge paragraphs. This interpretive style can perhaps be called neutral and objective: the bare notes are expected to make the musical points by themselves. If you like that sort of thing in your Scarlatti, this disc probably rates five stars. The playing comes across as "superhuman," and will probably please anyone who thrives on heavily produced rock music. Every note is put into place against a mental click track (whether through real-time performance or in the editing, we don't know and it doesn't matter). There are no rhythmic surprises whatsoever, and everything comes across as hard-driven and flashy. If your idea of high energy performance is loud and fast playing with startling digital precision, this is for you. There will be some listeners who hear this disc as "awesome": the technical feat is indeed something to marvel at in its own right. If instead you expect a harpsichordist to deliver phrases like a singer or a wind player, or to react to the individual compositions with a natural-sounding variety of expression, you will probably not enjoy this disc. With that expectation, the playing here is "subhuman" and rates one star: ultimately lifeless. Where is the improvisatory whimsy, the breathing, the delicacy, the sense of gesture? The mechanistic precision is of course astonishing, but to what end? This approach reduces Scarlatti's music to finger exercises, and makes most of the sonatas sound the same as one another. This disc doesn't seem like a set of *performances* where the music moves along on its own momentum, growing like an organic creature. It's a collection of cleanly played notes all in a row. If you've heard a few measures, you know how the rest of the piece is going to go in its unrelenting consistency. It is far too easy for a listener to "zone out" while this disc is on, and to realize much later that it is still playing and nothing has changed in the universe (except that time seems to be moving very slowly). The machinery whirs along merrily like a car on cruise control, and the scenery seems not to matter. Are we there yet? This is a bright and shining product, very slick. Is it also musically satisfying? That depends what satisfies you. In case it's not already painfully clear reading between the lines: I personally had hoped to hear more in the music than I found here. But "your mileage may vary." (And I'm trying to review this with the same spirit of objectivity that Comparone gives this music.) On average, three stars."

Comparone's Scarlatti

Lawrence Zingesser | New York, NY USA | 08/24/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This review follows on the heels of the review by B. Lehman, and is intended to help balance the scale in the interests of a little more objectivity than Lehman was hoping to display. I am not a fan of rock music and I abhor loud flashy pieces, but I love the energy, and technical prowess that Comparone brings to the harpsichord, and to these pieces by Scarlatti. I have listened to this recording many times (without "zoning out). I cast my ballot for this kind of "red-blooded" harpsichord music."

Scarlatti for (nearly) everyone

Molly the Cat | the USA | 06/05/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Elaine Comparone's Scarlatti disc is, in my opinion, a very fine effort. I was moved to write by the efforts of a previous reviewer who considered the recording "Scarlatti for the hard rock fan." I think this is an exceedingly unfair assessment, and after reading the liner notes to Comparone's CD, I think I know what may have suggested it; there, we are told that this artist "enjoys standing at the harpsichord to play" and even has had a special stand built to allow this. "As inspiration" for this, the notes continue, "she cites Vermeer, along with the fact that she is a member of the rock and roll generation." It may be that the image of a rock and roll keyboardist pounding on an electronic synthesizer so colored this reviewer's impression of the disc that he felt moved to give it a largely negative review.



I do not mean to say, however, that his observations are completely invalid. It is true that Ms. Comparone does play Scarlatti in a largely steady tempo, though this is certainly not always the case (for example, in the B Minor sonata K. 197). But it seems to me that this kind of performance style is valid for this composer, as it would not be for music in a more subjective vein, such as C.P.E. Bach or the late Romantics. I could do with a touch more differentiation of phrasing in a piece like the G Minor sonata K. 12 with its many repeated phrases, which may make the unwary listener suppose that his or her CD has somehow become "stuck in one groove" in the manner of an old vinyl LP record. However, since this presumably is what Scarlatti wrote, I cannot fault Ms. Comparone as the messenger of the music.



I think there are a good many beauties on this disc, starting with the very first track (F Minor sonata K. 239). Those thinking that they will hear "rock and roll Scarlatti" in Ms. Comparone's playing are quite misjudging the effect of the CD, in my opinion."