This rather wonky release explores a little-known aspect of the music of
Domenico Scarlatti -- or at least that's what the outside of the package leads you to believe.
Scarlatti is best known for his hundreds of small, mostly single-movement harpsichord sonatas, miniature wonders nearly every one, with a plethora of sounds and rhythmic effects absorbed during the composer's long residence in Spain. But he also worked in many other genres over his long career, and he wrote some competent fugues and other polyphonic organ pieces that are included on this album.
The problem is that you get only half of what you pay for. Although they bury this information in the zillionth paragraph of the liner notes, the compilers of this CD argue that distinctions between keyboard instruments were not fixed during the Baroque, and thus that performance of harpsichord pieces on the organ is valid. In the abstract there's something to this idea, but as executed here it is musically unsatisfying. Some of these works are harpsichord pieces, pure and simple, and they depend structurally on contrasts and types of articulation that do not come off on the organ. The Sonata in C major, K. 117 (track 9), is a good example, as organist
Maria Cecilia Farina concedes in her technically formidable liner notes. She doesn't tell you the half of it; it's not just
Scarlatti's "flamenco-like harmonies" (a questionable term in itself) that don't work on the organ, it's likewise the sharp, sudden runs that are such a delicious part of his vocabulary. Organists looking for unfamiliar repertoire may find this interesting, but for most buyers it's basically a curiosity.