Scarlatti Sonates Choisies Pour Piano Molteni - Pcl10233 - Piano Classics - Classical

Le plaisir pur de dévaler les traits, de mordre les arpèges, de fouetter les rythmes, tout cela dans un ras de clavier ignorant la pédale, quel bonheur, quelle jouissance. Andrea Molteni, jeune prodige du nouveau piano italien, n’a certainement pas le clavecin en tête, mais bien plutôt la guitare, le coté sec de son jeu, le spirituoso de ses bouts de doigts qui semblent soulever les touches, plutôt que de les enfoncer enfièvrent l’ibérisme de ces pages. Avec cela un goût des grands décors, d’une ardente lumière, qui magnifient la générosité harmonique des textes, éclairent leurs capricieuses divagations. A certains moment la tête me tourne devant tant de vitalité, où s’invite une nuance dionysiaque : le mouvement produit l’ivresse, le plaisir rageur du virtuose est contagieux, l’intensité expressive souvent fascinante (la Sonate en ut mineur K. 116). A mesure un interprète singulier de l’univers Scarlatti parait, avec ses propres carrures modernes, imposant ces 18 Sonates vues du 21e Siècle. La conversation avec Howard Shelley retranscrite dans le livret laisse espérer que cet album puisse être le premier d’une série. Pianiste à suivre, assurément. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)

‘A strange but wonderful album’: one of the accolades for Andrea Molteni’s debut album on Piano Classics, of the piano works by his countrymen Dallapiccola and Petrassi (PCL10222). For a sequel, he turns to the endlessly inventive store of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, who drew on his own extraordinary abilities at the keyboard to produce the illusion of written improvisations within a basic two-part form which left routine formulas of keyboard composition farther and farther behind. In a booklet conversation with the pianist and Lisztian Leslie Howard, Molteni explains that he has selected 18 lesser-known sonatas in a sequence which moves through the keys in the manner of The Well-Tempered Clavier, beginning with the A major virtuoso flourishes of K24 and ending with the G minor of K546. Howard praises the clarity and luminosity of Molteni’s touch; the sensitivity of his approach to ornamentation, which carefully emulates the effects and articulation available on a harpsichord as much as possible; strong dynamic contrasts; and the breathing pauses between sections, which allow for a change of registration like a harpsichord stop. Without observing the traditional pairings of Scarlatti’s sonatas, Molteni’s sequence encompasses the violinistic figurations of the early sonatas from the composer’s residence in Rome as well as the fandangos and guitaristic flourishes of his later and much longer stay in Madrid in service to the Princess (then Queen) Maria Magdalena Barbara. Scarlatti himself professed an aim of ‘ingenious jesting with art’ in a preface to one of volume of sonatas, and Molteni proves himself more than equal to the required balance between musical sophistication and virtuoso demands.