Sergei Babayan - Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas (2000)

When I first put this disc on, the beginning of the langorous performance of the Sonata in g minor, K. 8, really put me off. Two reasons: I'm used to the sonata, which is after all marked 'allegro,' being played faster than this. And I usually don't like overt emotionality in music from the Baroque. Still, I was impressed by Babayan's technique (and, boy, did that impression go ever higher and higher when I heard how he handled the really fast sonatas recorded here) and I really liked ProPiano's recorded SOUND on that first cut. I immediately played the cut again - without going on to the rest of the CD - and realized that what we had here was a pianist with the courage of his convictions; I always like that. Further, I realized that his take on this sonata was perfectly valid; it made me listen to this thrice-familiar piece as if it were new--not an easy thing with core repertoire. Although I knew Babayan was a competition winner - and that often spells dull dull dull - it was clear that here was a player with fingers of steel but also a thinking and feeling MUSICIAN. (I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Babayan is also a composer.) Why? Because the second time through this very familiar sonata SANG to me in a way it never had before, and sang in a melancholy and personal way. Whoa, I thought, maybe there's something here after all. When I got to cut 15, for the C major sonata, K. 502, one of my real favorites, his crystalline and poetically inflected performance won me over.
Then, after hearing how Babayan handles the extraordinarily difficult repeated notes and runs in the toccata-like K. 141 I was sold. Here is a Major Scarlatti Player, and like none I'd ever heard before. Understand, I have Scarlatti recordings by probably thirty different keyboard artists (including all 555 sonatas by the late-lamented harpsichordist, Scott Ross), and I'd never heard one with this combination of technique and what I'd have to call 'soul', by which I guess I mean a fervent (and it occurred to me, a Spanish) expressivity. Not Horowitz (almost everyone's favorite), Weissenberg (my own favorite), Dubravka Tomsic (a recent discovery for me), no one.
My favorable reaction held up to the very end of this lovely CD. I know I'll be reaching for it again and again.
Now, who is Sergei Babayan? All I know is that he's originally an Armenian who studied in Moscow with the fabled Lev Naumov and also with Mikhail Pletnev (whose Scarlatti, ironically, strikes me as gray) before the break-up of the Soviet Union, that he has lived in the US for more than a decade, and is associated with the Cleveland Institute of Music. I certainly know that I want to hear more. I see that he has a compilation recording that includes part of the Ligeti 'Musica ricercata.' That will have to go on my 'to buy' list.
"Ah, So Much Music, So Little Time!" said he, with a mock sigh.
Heartiest recommendation.