The Complete Works, Volume X: Piano Book

This collection gathers ten complete suites in a single, sturdy edition, eliminating the hunt across scattered volumes. Scarlatti's keyboard writing bridges the Baroque and galant worlds with such inventiveness that these pieces work equally well as standalone recital material, as curriculum touchstones, or as supplementary repertoire that deepens a pianist's understanding of form and voice leading.

These sonatas sparkle with wit and virtuosity, moving between angular, almost aggressive passagework and moments of surprising harmonic sophistication or tender lyricism. Each suite unfolds as a journey through contrasting emotional territories, bounded by the formal clarity and architectural strength that made Scarlatti's keyboard writing so influential across centuries.

Advanced pianists preparing sonatas for recital or competition will find these suites indispensable, while serious students working through the keyboard canon with a teacher benefit enormously from having multiple complete works available in one volume. Piano faculty assembling comprehensive curricula or building a studio library of foundational Baroque keyboard literature will appreciate both the breadth and the editorial consistency of this Kalmus edition.

• Approach ornamentation as structural rather than decorative; each trill and mordent clarifies harmonic movement and phrasing, so practice them at tempo from the outset rather than adding them later.
• Attend carefully to the hand-crossing passages and rapid scalar work that dominate many of these sonatas; Scarlatti expects confident, secure technique without sacrificing musicality or forward momentum.
• Shape each movement around its strongest harmonic arrival points, resisting the urge to treat rapid passagework as mere display and instead letting each gesture build toward its destination.
• Experiment with tempo flexibility within established beats; Scarlatti's binary forms often compress and expand emotional time in surprising ways that reward thoughtful rubato.

Pair these works in a solo recital with works from later keyboard idioms (Classical or early Romantic) to demonstrate the evolution of form and technique, or program a single sonata to anchor a concert of Baroque keyboard music. They also function well as repertoire for developing artists who benefit from studying multiple works within the same creative voice and period.

• Reading and executing rapid scalar passages and hand crossings with security and musicality
• Ornamentation execution in Baroque style (trills, mordents, turns) as integral to harmonic and formal clarity
• Understanding binary form and its emotional and structural articulation
• Balancing counterpoint with keyboard-specific texture in Baroque composition
• Developing rhythmic precision and independence between hands across varied tempos and figurations
• Interpreting harmonic language on the cusp of Baroque and galant aesthetics