Digital Programmes
Domenico Scarlatti
Start time: 2pm
2pm Part 1 – Mahan Esfahani
3.15pm interval
3.30pm Professor Sir Barry Ife
4pm Part 2 – Aline Zylberajch
5pm interval
5.30pm panel discussion
6.15pm interval
6.30pm Part 3 – Daria van den Bercken
Approximate end time: 7.30pm
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
This performance is subject to government guidelines
Domenico Scarlatti is one of those figures all keyboard players want to claim as their own, writes Harriet Smith, including star harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, who’s put together today’s celebration.
What’s the secret behind his allure? Perhaps the story itself of Scarlatti’s life is a good starting point. He was born the same year as J S Bach and Handel – 1685 – and wrote over 555 sonatas (many of which were not catalogued). Common to virtually all of them is a liking for simple two-part structures and a compactness that proves, just as much as Anton Webern and György Kurtág were to do in later centuries, that impact and size have little to do with one another.
That in itself is remarkable enough, but then factor in the notion that, as far as we know, these works date from the last two decades of Scarlatti’s life and their existence seems all the more remarkable. We have Princess Maria Barbara to thank for their inspiration; she was Scarlatti's pupil and patroness at the Portuguese court and, when she subsequently became Queen of Spain, Scarlatti followed her first to Seville and later to Madrid. That she was a sensational player is abundantly evident, Scarlatti allowing his imagination free rein in pieces that can be hugely virtuosic but which above all set out to create vibrant pictures in the mind, drawing on all manner of musical influences in the process. But what’s also truly amazing is the consistency of the invention – are there any duff ones among them? If so, I’ve yet to encounter them.
The sheer aural spectacle of his music is certainly second to none – Mahan Esfahani observes: ‘In this sense, Domenico Scarlatti is a highly confrontational composer. He experiments with sound within full view of his spectators. Moreover, he uses material that still bears the odour of the soil whence it came. But none of this makes his philosophy any less profound than that of, say, J S Bach. JSB’s esoteric speculations emerge from his quiet contemplation of the mystical relations between the notes. Scarlatti’s role, on the other hand, is rather that of a guide to his own life. If we often see it as playful or superficial it is perhaps because we find it too real to the point of being vulgar. And if we can only see Bach on a pedestal, it is because we find it easier to speak of virtue in the abstract as a way of avoiding reality.’
And that brings us to another extraordinary aspect of this music: Scarlatti’s ability to conjure descriptive music, whether it’s a pair of hunting horns leading us galloping into the forest, of a courtly dance, the sound of bells, a flamenco guitar or the strumming of a mandolin or even an entire orchestra. By turn the music struts, it cajoles, it sings, it giggles, it implores, it dances. And all this is achieved by a pair of hands at a keyboard. Goethe summed matter up when he observed that ‘it is when working within limits that genius declares itself’. While tone-painting in music was a popular pastime in the Baroque, many other composers look pale and polite compared to Domenico Scarlatti. And it’s perhaps because the harpsichord (or piano) can only hint at the timbres implied in the sonatas that it gives us as listeners the opportunity to let our imaginations run free.
And there’s a sense, too, that, whoever interprets Scarlatti’s music today – whether on a period-appropriate harpsichord or in an act of borrowing via the piano – they are in effect offering transcriptions or reimaginings of these pieces. In the hands of truly creative artists this music offers an irresistible challenge to make their own.
But what’s also inescapable – as much today as when the ink was still wet on the page – is how individual and ground-breaking Scarlatti was. As Mahan Esfahani puts it: ‘With each phrase of this truly original music, he surprises us anew with his humour and his empathy with his fellow humans, and ultimately reveals us to ourselves.’
© Harriet Smith
Start time: 2pm
Approximate end time: 7.30pm, including 3 intervals
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
This performance is subject to government guidelines
Programme and performers
Domenico Scarlatti a selection of sonatas
2pm Part 1 – Mahan Esfahani
K 109, 57, 84
K 211, 212
K 296, 297
K 213, 214
K 420, 421
K 52
K 516, 517
3.15pm interval
3.30pm Professor Sir Barry Ife
4pm Part 2 – Aline Zylberajch
K 277, 45
K 234, 226, 386
K 544, 107
K 215, 220, 216
K 213, 60, 43
K 132, 103, 282
5pm interval
5.30pm panel discussion
6.15pm interval
6.30pm Part 3 – Daria van den Bercken
K 183, 54, 519
K 27, 230, 212
Enrique Granados Piano Sonata No 11 (arr of Domenico Scarlatti K 110)
Piano Sonata No 8 (arr Domenico Scarlatti K 546)
‘Andaluza’ from 12 Spanish Dances
Domenico Scarlatti K 32, 544, 531, 492
Performers
Mahan Esfahani harpsichord
Aline Zylberajch fortepiano
Daria van den Bercken piano
Professor Sir Barry Ife speaker
Kerstin Schwarz panellist
Artist biographies
Whether in the realm of re-establishing the harpsichord’s presence as a significant concerto instrument with leading orchestras of the day, working with electronics and new media, or playing some of the first harpsichord recitals in such places as China, Mahan Esfahani has established himself as a new pioneer of his instrument. His commissioning work includes new solo and concertante works from Elena Kats-Chernin, Daniel Kidane, Miroslav Srnka, Anahita Abbasi, Bent Sørensen, George Lewis and others. Following studies in musicology and history at Stanford University he completed his studies with Zuzana Růžičková in Prague. Many of his recordings – for Hyperion, Wigmore Hall Live and Deutsche Grammophon – have received major prizes in the classical music field. For BBC Radio 3, Esfahani recently recorded a three-part series entitled The Alternative Bach exploring rare recordings and interpretations of JS Bach’s music. This goes alongside his ongoing cycle at the Wigmore Hall in which he performs the entire collection of JS Bach’s works for keyboard. He is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, former Artist-in-Residence at New College Oxford and honorary member at Keble College Oxford. Born in Tehran in 1984 and raised in the United States, he lived in Milan and London before taking up residence in Prague.
A graduate of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, Paris, and of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Aline Zylberajch started her career as a harpsichordist. She contributed to the early productions of ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Musiciens du Louvre and Le Parlement de Musique, with which she performed numerous operas and oratorios. Later, her interest in the music of the late 18th Century led her naturally to an intensive involvement in the performance practice of the early piano, discovering at the same time the amazing variety of keyboard instruments that flourished all over Europe. This period, which also saw the increasing popularity of duos, trios and quartets with obbligato keyboard, opened up a whole new field of research into chamber music, and led to new happy musical encounters. One of her other addictions is playing vocal music, from early Baroque songs to Lieder evenings, and listening to the many ways the voice inspires keyboard repertoire.
Sharing through teaching has always been an important part of her musical life. As a harpsichord teacher at the Academie Supérieure de Musique in Strasbourg, she has been invited to give recitals and to give interpretation Masters classes in France, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Germany, Mexico, Australia & Japan. She also teaches pedagogy of the harpsichord at the Pedagogy Department of Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, Paris. She is a founding member and since 2020 appointed chairwoman of ‘Clavecin en France’ society. Her recordings have received much praise in Diapason, Classica, Gramophone, Early Music Review, Répertoire, le Monde de la Musique, etc.
Celebrated for the electrifying way she brings piano music to new life, Dutch-Russian pianist Daria van den Bercken is a multiple prize winning artist.
Daria’s Handel, Mozart and Scarlatti recordings for Sony Classical had the international press writing about her ‘mixture of joy and lightness’, ‘musical affection and an immaculate virtuosity.’ Daria is recipient of the Amsterdam Art Prize for her project bringing the Handel keyboard works to a new international audience.
Daria’s viral TED Talk with more than a million views was named 'Top Pick of 2014'. It has led to the founding in 2016 of the Keys to Music Foundation, seeking a new audience for classical music through artistic and educational projects. Daria’s latest project is the Piano Biennale, an international piano and music festival in The Netherlands which held its first edition in 2021, despite the Covid epidemic. It is the first piano festival in which different art forms work together in unique productions.
Recent debuts include performances with the Residentie Orchestra, Camerata Ireland and Sczecin Philharmonic Orchestra. Other performances include collaborations with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, with the Seoul Philharmonic, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic and collaborations with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Stefan Asbury, Ton Koopman and Christoph Poppen.
As a recitalist, Daria has made frequent appearances at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and performed recitals at the London Baroque Unwrapped in Kings Place, Irelands New Ross Piano Festival/Westport Chamber Music/Clandeboye Festivals, Baroque Conversations series in Zipper Hall in Los Angeles, all major Dutch festivals, the Istanbul Music Festival and the Konzerthaus Vienna.
Professor Sir Barry Ife is a cultural historian specialising in the literature and music of Spain and Spanish America from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. He held the Cervantes Chair of Spanish at King’s College London from 1988-2004, and was Principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama from 2004 to 2017, where he is now a Research Professor. He is currently working on a book on the power of the voice in Cervantes, and putting together a team to collate all of the surviving manuscripts and printed editions of Scarlatti’s sonatas. He was appointed CBE in the 2000 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to Hispanic Studies and received a knighthood in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to performing arts education.
Kerstin Schwarz trained as a musical instrument restorer at the Händel-Haus in Halle and at the Technische Fachhochschule in Berlin, obtaining her degree in 1994. In the same year she began doing organological research. She has published various articles in professional journals and has regularly been invited to conferences. In 1997, she made her first instrument, a Cristofori piano, and in 2013 her first Silbermann piano. Both instruments have been widely used in concerts, CD productions and master classes throughout Europe. She worked with Tony Chinnery in Vicchio, near Florence, for 17 years. Thereafter, in 2008, founded her own firm, Animus Cristophori, making fortepianos, clavecin royals, clavichords, harpsichords and spinets, as well as restoring historical originals. In 2015 she moved her workshop to Zerbst (Germany). From 2017-2019 she was a teacher at the musical instrument making department at the School of Art in Ghent. Kerstin Schwarz has restored and built historical replicas of keyboard instruments for numerous institutions in Germany, Italy and Spain.
