This generously filled Scarlatti recital by Mark Swartzentruber is crisp and enlivening, without a trace of the distorting idiosyncrasy of other more celebrated pianists (indeed, the greater the celebrity the more idiosyncratic the playing).
The slight hiatus before the fanfares involving wide leaps across the keyboard in Kk427 may suggest a momentary strain, and the final D minor Toccata sounds stilted after Martha Argerich’s liquid-fire bravura on her EMI disc of performances from her 1978-79 Amsterdam recitals (4/00). But given Swartzentruber’s overall achievement such a comparison is, arguably, unfair. The sky-rocketing flights in Kk454 are taken with complete assurance, and in the pianist’s retreat into less familiar territory in Kk133 there is an open-hearted relish of the music’s wild trumpetings and mischievous asides. Phrases are tapered with an admirable musical precision in the ornate and reflective Kk544, and every facet of Kk492, with its teasing ultra- Spanish changes of mood and direction, is registered with verve and character.
Again, in Kk513 you are made transparently aware of how few composers have so unashamedly delighted in taking their listeners by surprise. Swartzentruber’s immaculate virtuosity in this glorious work reveals a pianist as responsive to revelry as to reflection, to dazzling wit as to reverie. Less lavishly tinted and inflected than from some, all these finely recorded performances carry their own serious and modern authenticity.'