Plays Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti (Naples 1685 – Madrid 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in Spain and Portugal. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. His fame rightly rests on the hundreds of keyboard sonatas, nearly all in the same binary form, in which he gave free rein to his imagination, stimulated by the new sounds, sights and customs of Iberia. In these he explored new worlds of virtuoso technique, putting to new musical ends such devices as hand-crossing, rapidly repeated notes, wide leaps in both hands and countless other means of achieving a devastating brilliance of effect.