Composer of the Week: Domenico Scarlatti

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757): Emancipation

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Emancipation

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Emancipation

Scarlatti puts his home and his family behind him.

Scarlatti takes legal action to assert his independence and makes a decisive change of direction. We follow him to a new start in far-away Portugal. Presented by Kate Molleson.

Scarlatti puts his home and his family behind him. Presented by Kate Molleson.

Domenico Scarlatti was well placed to build himself a glittering career in the music business.  He was prestigiously talented and born into a family with powerful connections in the music business. His home city of Naples was a major centre for the fashionable new art form of opera.  But there were challenges, too.  Competition was fierce and musicians often found their fates helplessly tied to the fickle fortunes of their aristocratic patrons.  On top of all that, Domenico faced another, distinctly personal, test to his career aspirations; he was working in the shadow of a much more celebrated Scarlatti – his own father! It would take several decades, and more than a few changes of direction, before Domenico finally found his right path, becoming one of the baroque period’s most significant composers.  Today, he’s rightly revered for the extraordinary catalogue of over 550 keyboard sonatas he left to posterity.  This week, Kate Molleson traces Scarlatti's story and looks at what else there is to discover in his legacy alongside his celebrated keyboard works.

Today’s Scarlatti takes legal action to assert his independence and makes a decisive change of direction. We follow him as he abandons the familiar cultural circles of Italy for a new start in far-away Portugal.

Sonata in G, K 284
Mikhail Pletnev, piano

Messa breve 'La Stella': Kyrie
The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers

La Dirindina (extract from Scene 1)
Marina Bartoli, soprano, (Dirindina)
Giulio Mastrototaro, baritone (Don Carissimo)
L’Arte dell’Arco, directed by Federico Guglielmo

Sonata in D, K 443
Sonata in F, K 17
Mikhail Pletnev, piano

Stabat Mater
Le Caravansérail, directed by Bertrand Cuiller

Contesa della stagione: VIII. ‘Giorno felice’…‘Sia dolce e caro e grato’
Heiner Hopfner, tenor
Munich Chamber Orchestra, directed by Hans Ludwig Hirsch

Composer of the Week: Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

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Kate Molleson surveys the life and music of Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti.

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Emancipation

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