It may look a little lazy of Francesco Corti to choose 16 Scarlatti sonatas with Kirkpatrick numbers in the early 250s, as if he had only bothered to look in one book, but he has his reasons. In the absence of other information, most Kk numbers only tell us the date in which sonatas were copied into their earliest manuscript source, rather than when they were actually composed. Yet there are experts who suspect that many were at least nearly new when they went into the book, and Corti is happy to assume as much, and that these sonatas were composed within a fairly short period leading up to 1753 – ‘in Scarlatti’s full maturity’, as he puts it, ‘though separate from the later experiments’. Corti also follows the source in presenting the sonatas in linked pairs in the same tonality, something which may or may not reflect Scarlatti’s wishes (and indeed has fallen somewhat out of favour in recent years), but which undoubtedly works musically.

Corti’s dazzling recording of Handel Suites (5/22) showed us that he is a virtuoso of uncommon brilliance and aplomb, which sound like just the things you want for Scarlatti. It hardly needs saying, then, that he sweeps aside the exhausting technical challenges of these sonatas – the rushing torrents of notes in Kk248, the athletic chasing around of Kk216, the chattering fingerwork of Kk242 or the double thirds of Kk218 – delivering them to us with a crisp precision and controlled flexibility that only adds to their excitement. But just as there is more to Scarlatti’s music than this, so there is to Corti. Five of the sonatas he has chosen are at slow tempos – among them Kk208 (well known for its poignant lyricism) and the aristocratically poised Kk213 – and these he handles like precious jewels, holding them up to view with every note perfectly placed, every spread chord meticulously timed, every trill an exquisitely paced part of the line.

Corti’s Handel also revealed an inventive and creative embellisher, and it is no surprise to find him doing all sorts of things to the repeats in Scarlatti’s binary-form sonatas, from the odd short trill to short bursts of countermelody, and from racy lead-back flourishes to exuberant spill overs of extra notes. It is never for the sake of it, however; all add to the music’s emotion, power or sometimes sheer strangeness. Listen to the way the pretty left-hand drones in Kk243 return thickly stomping or how in Kk215 the recapitulation of the second theme is prepared by questioning reiterations of the previous section’s last note.

The beauty of listening to a Scarlatti album is that you are almost guaranteed to encounter sonatas you haven’t heard before. Add to that here a new way of interpreting them.