Ana Vidović plays the Sonata in D minor, K. 1 by Domenico Scarlatti. With more than a million views it is one of the most watched Scarlatti performances on our channel, and three minutes are enough to show why this music has found such a natural home on the guitar.
About the Sonata K. 1
Scarlatti wrote his sonatas for the harpsichord, and the "K" refers to the catalogue compiled by the American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. K. 1 opens the Essercizi per gravicembalo, a set of thirty sonatas published in London in 1739 and dedicated to King John V of Portugal. Of the 555 sonatas that survive, these thirty are the only ones Scarlatti edited himself, which makes the first of them a kind of front door to his whole output.
The sonata is brief and bright, a single movement in two halves, each repeated, built on quick figures that pass between the hands. On the guitar, those figures have to be shared between the thumb and the fingers of the right hand, and the clarity of a harpsichord, where every note speaks at once, has to be recreated by touch. That is the real challenge of playing Scarlatti on six strings.
About Domenico Scarlatti
Born in Naples in the same year as Bach and Handel, Scarlatti spent most of his career on the Iberian Peninsula, first at the Portuguese court and later in Spain. Many guitarists hear Spanish colour in his music, the strummed chords and the dance rhythms of the country where he lived, and that is one reason his sonatas transfer so well to the instrument. Our article on Scarlatti on the classical guitar explores this connection, and our Scarlatti repertoire guide lists the sonatas guitarists play most. You can also hear Ioanna Kazoglou playing the Sonata K. 27.
About Ana Vidović
Born in Karlovac near Zagreb, Ana Vidović began playing at five and was thirteen when she became the youngest student at the National Musical Academy in Zagreb, studying with Istvan Romer. She later graduated from the Peabody Conservatory. Her early first prizes include the Albert Augustine International Competition in Bath, the Fernando Sor Competition in Rome and the Francisco Tárrega Competition in Spain, and she has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Musikverein in Vienna.
Watch the Performance
You can hear Ana Vidović in Bach in our article on her recording of the Prelude from the Cello Suite No. 1, and find more works in our overview of famous classical guitar pieces.
