Well, the archives are missing,

Well, the archives are missing, and I will try republishing them later, but after my last misadventure with blogger, I think I will leave well enough alone until the weekend.

Steven Riddle recently posted about his experiences listening to the work of Domenico Scarlatti on the piano and how something was missing. He further discussed the problems of Bach lute suites on the guitar. He is absolutely correct, and I am going to approach this with my bias against the piano momentarily set aside (although I will pick it up again immediately after I hit "Post and Publish" so don't go thinking I am getting cast-ironic on you).

The piano is a percussion instrument. It produces sound by means of hammers striking strings that are held at high tension to a cast iron frame. The sound is big and full. Even with a light touch, the notes ring much longer than on an instrument with a wooden frame. Certain composers compose with specific sound envelopes in mind. Scarlatti was always doing this. He worked with the contrast between delicate melodic lines and crashing chords to provide musical interest. If those elements linger on too long they completely destroy the effect. A pianist will attempt to fudge the effect by manipulating the dynamics, but this is essentially trying to change quality by changing quantity (well, more or less, and that is the crux of my argument against playing any Baroque music on the piano - more on that later).

Even to move certain pieces from the wooden frame fortepiano to the cast iron frame modern piano can devastate the intended sound. For many years I wondered why Mozart's Rondo alla turca was so named. There was nothing very Seljuk about the scales or harmonies. The form and rhythm was Western. Then my music theory professor, the brilliant Russian pianist Anatole Leiken, explained and used the historically informed choice of wood frame fortepiano to illustrate. In the recurring B section, the rolling chords were supposed to emulate the sound of the Janissary kettle drums. Without the excessive ringing of the pitches found on the cast iron instrument, these chords actually soundes drum-like. When the A section came back, the delicacy of the melody was a striking contrast, and we were able to hear this piece like we had never heard it before.

It is the same when I hear a Scarlatti sonata on a piano. The crispness of the chordal attacks is destroyed, and the contrast with the delicate passages is lost. The result is a flabby sounding piece. Vladimir Horowitz's Scarlatti is a horrid sounding example of this flabbiness. Scarlatti's music, when played on a harpsichord (and I cheat and prefer a French or Flemish double manual to the Italian single manual Scarlatti used) shimmers and sparkles like none other.

The one adaptation of Scarlatti that I have found that I like is on accordion. It is a Winter Edition release and is absolutely breathtaking!