Scarlatti: The Complete Works, Volume II

These ten suites offer pianists a direct encounter with one of the Baroque era's most inventive and pianistically demanding voices. The Kalmus edition presents the full text with excellent legibility, making it possible to study the architecture of Scarlatti's thinking across entire groups of sonatas rather than in isolated excerpts. Advanced students and professional pianists will find inexhaustible material for recital programming, technical development, and historical understanding.

These suites pulse with wit, virtuosity, and harmonic daring. Each sonata balances rhetorical display with intimate harmonic surprises, moving between brilliant passage work and moments of lyrical simplicity with sudden unpredictability. The overall effect is exhilarating, technically taxing, and deeply satisfying for ears trained to follow Scarlatti's restless harmonic invention.

This collection is designed for advanced pianists working toward concert recitals, graduate study, or comprehensive historical repertoire knowledge. It suits teachers preparing advanced students for competitions or recitals that include Baroque material, and it serves as an essential reference for pianists exploring the keyboard idiom across musical periods.

• Map out the hand crossings well in advance of performance. Scarlatti writes them into the musical fabric, not as technical decoration, so clarity of line depends on planning the exact moment and height of the crossing.
• Approach the rapid figuration as part of the harmonic argument, not as empty passage work. Each flourish and scale fragment should articulate the underlying chord progression.
• Observe the binary form carefully. Most of these sonatas follow a two-part structure with clear repeat points; respecting the repeat, if taken, shapes the listener's experience of harmonic and thematic return.
• Use the sustain pedal judiciously. Scarlatti's textures often depend on clear voice independence; overuse of pedal will blur the contrapuntal writing and technical precision he intended.

Single sonatas from this volume work exceptionally well on recitals pairing Baroque and Classical repertoire, particularly when programmed alongside early Beethoven or later Mozarts to show harmonic and structural evolution. A group of three to five consecutive sonatas from the same suite can form a substantial standalone group, giving audiences a sense of Scarlatti's range within a single sitting. Advanced students benefit from mining these volumes for recital material across a full season of performances.

• Hand crossing and independence in rapid passagework
• Reading and executing wide intervallic leaps and angular melodic lines
• Understanding binary form and harmonic architecture in Baroque keyboard music
• Technical control of rhythmic precision across fast figurations
• Interpretation of ornamentation and articulation in the Baroque keyboard idiom
• Pedal management in texturally complex writing