Marcelle Meyer: 27 Scarlatti Sonatas (78rpm disc recordings)

If you wish to support The Piano Files, please consider membership at my Patreon page:   / thepianofiles  

For more information about Marcelle Meyer: https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-mar...

A series of 27 Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti recorded by the fabled French pianist Marcelle Meyer for Les Discophiles Français between 1946 and 1949.

The 3 albums of these 78rpm discs were first issued in long-play format on a Pearl CD in 2001, produced by Don Manildi and remastered by Seth Winner. While that release stated that the recordings were been made in 1947, it appears that these performances were set down over the course of four years: in November 1946; on December 20, 1948; and on May 10, 1949.

Meyer's 1954-55 series of 32 Scarlatti Sonatas is better known, being among the four two-LP sets of her recordings released on the EMI France's References series in the 1980s that brought her back to public attention after her absence from the catalogue of some 25 years. These were then issued on CD in Volume 2 of the 'Les Introuvables' sets devoted to the artist, then again on the 'Les Rarissimes' series, and finally in the complete 17-CD box set of the artist's complete studio recordings. However, Meyer's readings on 78s of these works had not been appeared since their original release until the 2001 Pearl CD from which the upload presented here derives.

Scarlatti Sonatas were rarely recorded by pianists at the time: Ilona Eibenschütz and Wilhelm Backhaus were the earliest to put any on disc at the turn of the 20th century, Horowitz set down two in 1935, but it would be Robert Casadesus who would record the first volume on piano, a series of 11 for Columbia in 1937 - Wanda Landowska had recorded 20 on the harpsichord in 1934. Meyer's represents the most significant collection of the composer's Sonatas played on the piano up until that that time.

Meyer was a pianist who played with a unique blend of robustness and refinement, and we hear both qualities in these performances. While her 1950s account presents her distinctive supple phrasing and glass-like sonority with greater fidelity, in the present recordings we can appreciate the vivacity of her attack and rhythmic vitality in the more lively pieces, the lyrical ones revealing her fluid legato phrasing, refined pedal technique, and transparency of texture.

Terrific playing by one of the all-time great pianists!

0:00 Aria in D Minor, K 32
1:12 Allegro in A Minor, K 175
4:21 Allegro in B Minor, K 27
7:28 Vivo in G Major, K 125
8:30 Fuga ("del Gato") in G Minor, K 30
11:43 Sonata in B Minor, K 87
15:30 Andante commodo ("Cortege") in E Major, K 380
18:23 Non presto ma a tempo di ballo in D Major, K 430
19:47 Con spirito e presto in A Major, K 114
24:03 Gavota (Allegro) in D Minor, K 64
25:43 Andante in A Major, K 279
28:42 Allegro in B-flat Major, K 202
30:52 Allegro assai in F Minor, K 519
32:13 Allegro in D Minor, K 9
33:46 Allegro in D Major, K 119
36:12 Allegro in G Major, K 432
38:14 Presto, quanto sia possibile in G Major, K 427
39:20 Andante e cantabile in E-flat Major, K 474
42:57 Allegrissimo in B Minor, K 377
44:12 Allegrissimo in D Major, K 96
46:26 Sonata in F Minor, K 69
48:41 Presto in F Major, K 17
50:33 Allegro in G Minor, K 8
52:48 Presto in G Major, K 13
54:40 Allegrissimo in G Minor, K 450
57:30 Allegro in B Major, K 245
58:58 Andante e cantabile in D Major, K 478