Scarlatti, D: Keyboard Sonata K425 in G major

Armenian pianist Sergei Babayan studied in Moscow with Mikhael Pletnev, before settling in the States in 1989. He was a prizewinner in several important competitions: the Hamamatsu in Japan (where he won first prize), and the Queen Elisabeth and Busoni competitions. He regularly plays with Valery Gergiev, Yuri Temirkanov and Neeme Järvi. A wonderful interpreter of the great Romantics, Rachmaninoff and Liszt, he is equally at home with Bach (a superb Goldberg Variations!) and...Scarlatti, a generous selection of whose sonatas is recorded on this CD, formerly issued on the Pro Piano label: a stunning display of clarity, elegance, virtuosity and heartfelt emotion.

In his History of Music, published in 1928, Cecil Gray wrote of Domenico Scarlatti: In spirit….Domenico Scarlatti belongs…..to the succeeding age, to what we may call the Rococo rather than to the Baroque period.

Rising young Italian star Fabio Grasso has chosen to include all five of the Sonatas which Scarlatti wrote in the form of a fugue, in his selection from the 550 or so available. His intellectual approach to the music (he holds a Doctorate in ancient Greek literature as well!) is well suited to the fugues, but there’s virtuosity aplenty too – try the disc’s final track, marked ‘Presto quanto sia possibile’ – as fast as possible!