Domenico Scarlatti: Complete Sonatas, Vol. 8 / Ottavio Dantone (CD)

This disc is part of a series on Italy's Stradivarius label, covering all of the numerous and varied keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. The series includes discs by several different keyboardists, playing the different keyboard instruments (harpsichord, fortepiano, organ) on which Scarlatti's sonatas were known in their own time; on this set, Ottavio Dantone plays the harpsichord. Included here are the sonatas that make up the first half of Scarlatti's "Essercizi per il gravicembalo," or Exercises for keyboard; the other 15 sonatas are on another disc, played by someone else. The "Essercizi" are the only published set of Scarlatti sonatas we know about; the others have come down to us in an undifferentiated mass that yields few clues as to how Scarlatti grouped or performed them. Thus it's a bit frustrating that they weren't presented as a two-disc set; the sonatas given here fall naturally into groups (due to related keys, or strict/playful pairs), and the entire set suggests deeper.