No sooner does Naxos commence one immense project (the complete piano music of Liszt, for example) than it starts another. Volume 2 in its complete Scarlatti sonata cycle is played by Michael Lewin, an American pianist as dexterous and assured as he is audacious. Here there is no sense of 'studio' caution but only of liberating and dazzling music-making, live and on the wing. Kk492 in D could hardly provide a more brilliant curtain-raiser, and in Kk3 in A minor (the one where Scarlatti's impish humour offers the musical equivalent of someone slipping on a banana skin) Lewin's playing positively brims over with high spirits.
The D major Sonata, Kk33, is all thrumbing guitars and bursts of sunlight and in Kk141, with its cascades of repeated notes, Lewin even gives Martha Argerich (whose performance - never officially released - is of legendary status) a run for her money. There is a no less appealing balm and musical quality in the more restrained numbers such as Kk32 in D minor and Kk208 in A, though the recital comes to a suitably ebullient conclusion with Kk517 in D minor which, from Lewin, is like a river in full spate.
The New York-based recordings are suitably lively (by all accounts more successful than in Vol 1) and not even the most persistent lover of Scarlatti on the harpsichord could accuse Michael Lewin of heaviness, of an absence of the necessary glitter, panache and stylistic awareness.'