Alon Goldstein

Domenico Scarlatti is best remembered for the hundreds of single-movement keyboard sonatas he composed for his pupil the Infanta Maria Bárbara, who married the heir to the Spanish throne in 1728, taking her music master with her from Lisbon to Madrid. Scarlatti’s panache and inventiveness is always on show in these compact sonatas, their delicacy and refinement hiding some surprising explorations of unexpected keys, and technical demands such as hand-crossing and chains of sixths and thirds that would have posed some interesting challenges to his clearly talented pupil. © Naxos

Mozart himself had arranged four of his earlier concertos for the ensemble of piano, string quartet and bass, to enable his works to be performed domestically. Numerous subsequent transcriptions followed during the course of the 19th century, prominently those of the conductor and composer Ignaz Lachner. The concertos here are K. 271, "Jeunehomme", a particularly brilliant work, and the charming K. 453. Leaving the piano part untouched, Lachner ingeniously incorporates all the orchestral music, including wind parts, into his string transcriptions. © Naxos