Day One: Scarlatti Workshop
Lyz Day and Alberto Mesirca
After Alieksey Vianna's concert, the schedule was relaxed a bit, so I had some opportunity to make short work of my water and bread (with filling, of course). After a bit of rest, I went to the Scarlatti Workshop.
This lecture with musical demonstrations was completely dedicated to the composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757), who wrote a vast oeuvre of 555 sonatas, supplemented with quite a lot of operas, cantatas and orchestral works.
It was an interesting story which led us through Italy, Portugal and Spain, from one post to another, a journey which ended with Scarlatti's employment with princess -and queen of Spain for a short time- Maria Barbara. She was an intelligent woman who played the harpsichord well, knew a lot and read quite a number of books (by the vast library she collected in her lifetime). Unfortunately she was not allowed to do much with all this knowledge, locked as she was in her golden cage. Scarlatti wrote his Sonatas for her, and if you are able to play these 550...
There was quite some music to enjoy during this lecture which was set up as a question-answer game between Lyz and Alberto.
Lyz played a number of Sonatas on the harpsichord, she played them well although she was a bit impeded by the mechanical quirks of the Artez instrument.
Every harpsichord has a kind of deleay between pressing a key and the eventual sound, because a kind of plectrum plucking mechanism must be set into motion. This delay depends on the build of the instrument and of course the state of maintenance, which makes accurate timing quite tricky at times. To add insult to injury, the harpsichord had some poor key responses too.
Lyz clearly demonstrated the various forms and harmonic architectures which are common in the Scarlatti sonatas. In fairness, common is not the right word, because particularly Scarlatti's sonatas are an example of variation and musical innovation in his days.
Alberto Mesirca's guitar sound was in sharp contrast with the harpsichord interpretation. Particularly the Spanish idiom from quite a number of the Sonatas comes out beautifully on the guitar. He played the sonatas transparently with a sonorous sound and a very clear interpretation. As a listener you could follow the structure of the pieces in every detail.
It was fun to hear both the harpsichord and guitar interpretations. It is not surprising that quite a few Scarlatti sonatas have been transcribed for guitar. Alberto Mesirca knows everything about it, because he had just finished his CD with Scarlatti sonatas.
The last subject of the lecture dealt with the transcriptions of Scarlatti's work and all the puzzles you need to solve. It was interesting to hear how much work is involved in a reliable and confident transcription.