The choral music of Domenico Scarlatti is almost unknown, a mere footnote to the hundreds of concise yet radically innovative keyboard sonatas that were among the first works of the late Baroque/early Classical period to receive frequent performances. This disc from Belgium's Ricercar label, with a truly pan-European group of singers called Vox Luminis, is labeled as a performance of the Scarlatti Stabat Mater (less familiar even than that of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti), but it actually includes four choral works of ...
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The choral music of Domenico Scarlatti is almost unknown, a mere footnote to the hundreds of concise yet radically innovative keyboard sonatas that were among the first works of the late Baroque/early Classical period to receive frequent performances. This disc from Belgium's Ricercar label, with a truly pan-European group of singers called Vox Luminis, is labeled as a performance of the Scarlatti Stabat Mater (less familiar even than that of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti), but it actually includes four choral works of various kinds, plus two keyboard sonatas played on the organ. All, except for the opening Te Deum laudamus, are as conservative as the keyboard sonatas are radical -- polyphonic, rarely operatic, and drawing on aspects of Renaissance music and styles of the early Baroque. They may have been early works, written in Rome before Scarlatti's departure for the Iberian peninsula, but this is not certain. What's most striking is that, although conservative, the music shows a good deal of...
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