Scarlatti, D: Keyboard Sonata K517 in D minor

“Cerasi's recording builds a sense of a deeper Scarlatti, a composer filled with delightful musical quirks and oddities, at turns wheeling, ruminative and bumptious. It is a well-plotted disc, capturing the full range of the composer's moods...With Cerasi, there are no false steps...In short, Cerasi's disc is [a] delight and will please longtime Scarlatti collectors as much as it entices newcomers to explore further.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2012

“Domenico Scarlatti's fusion of Italian and Iberian styles dazzles in this artfully programmed recital...It's a playful performance, as impressive in its moments of introspection as it is in those of extrovert brilliance.” The Independent on Sunday, 3rd June 2012 *****

“…this is a disc fired with an all-embracing Mediterranean volatility, a smouldering sense of danger, and dusted with the pungent Hispanic kick of smoked paprika. If you buy just one Scarlatti disc this anniversary year, make it this one.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 *****

“Pierre Hantaï… beings… with one of the composer's most intimate pieces, the D minor Sonata, K213… Hantaï discovers its poetry in unhurried and reflective playing of great beauty. In striking contrast… is the D major Sonata, K511. Hantaï gives a dazzling account of it, exuding an irrepressible joie de vivre while preserving clarity of texture and demonstrating a cogency of thought.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2006 *****

“Pierre Hantai's third volume of Scarlatti is, once again, both beautifully programmed and recorded in an ideal acoustic” International Record Review

“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.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“A promising start to another colossal series, the complete sonatas of Scarlatti, here performed with panache by Michael Lewin.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2000