Scarlatti - Sonatas (Reissue Vol. I) - Valenti

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

36 Sonatas

Reissue Volume I*

Fernando Valenti, Harpsichord

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(Westminster, series recorded 1951 - early 1960's)

*recorded in stereo

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I bought the two volumes offered here in about 1976 when they were new on the shelves of the large (US West Coast) Tower Records chain store I frequented. As life can sometimes take very unexpected turns, I never imagined at the time that in several years I'd be working in a small classical record shop in New York* - one which critic Tim Page would later call "possibly the finest ... in the world":

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/...e-a-victim-of-economics.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/...ed-a-noted-record-store.html

... and where I'd also find myself asking Fernando Valenti to sign one of his LP's for me. To get an autograph from Fernando Valenti, though, was not my own idea. An older co-worker in the shop - knowing of my admiration for Valenti's playing - noticed that Valenti had entered the store while I was occupied with another customer, and quietly brought a Valenti disc to me. The co-worker leaned over and whispered: "Look over there - that's Fernando Valenti ... get him to sign this for you. He hasn't been doing so well lately - maybe it will cheer him up." Looking back now, I can only sincerely hope that it did.

From 1951 through the early 1960's, Fernando Valenti recorded about 360 of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas for Westminster. Now, as things stand, one would be very lucky to find half of the LP's in this series. These two offered reissue volumes from 1974 and 1975 (containing 72 sonatas) are described in the notes for the set as follows: "This reissue of over 300 harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti as recorded by Fernando Valenti restores to circulation one of the most notable recording enterprises of the last twenty years" - but nothing that I've been able to discover ever came later. The ongoing disappearance of Valenti's recordings among countless others, therefore, is not a new phenomenon. What's crucial is this: continuing neglect, amnesia and loss are fated to only worsen in the future under conditions which appear to have no end and which place profit above all else.

Of course, Deutsche Grammophon is the current owner of the Westminster catalogue. What DG finally does with its Westminster titles beyond the issuing of a 40-CD box called "Westminster Legacy" still remains open. But if Sony's track record with its handling of the Columbia catalogue is any indication, there is next to no cause for optimism.

This lack of optimism also has a well-founded tradition at this point in time.

In 1984, before he closed his already legendary record store for good, my former boss Franz Jolowicz confessed to the New York Times (see above articles): ''For so many years, I always thought of money as a means to an end, never as an end in itself. But in the last year, I've had to think of nothing but money, just to keep afloat. So it was time to go.''

Finally, I have the impression that Franz may have been indulging in a bit of understatement with his "So it was time to go". The implicit message, to my mind, was the following: the simple refusal to take part in a dead-end system is sometimes the only way to begin the process of ending the system once and for all. This requires drawing a line and making a total commitment to things like "art above acquisition"... but in the end, someone has to start doing it. (... and with Franz in particular, it's good to remember that while he was German by birth and upbringing, during World War II he served with the French Foreign Legion in North Africa and afterward worked with the American Red Cross in Italy).

Included in the notes for these ABC-Westminster reissues is a short interview with Fernando Valenti conducted by Frederick Hammond, in which Valenti sheds some light on the recording project which might have encompassed all of Scarlatti's sonatas.
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* "The air in the shop was thick with dissent. Staff members argued with staff members. Staff members argued with customers. Customers argued with customers. Since many staff members were former customers, lines of allegiance quickly blurred.... Some people spent hours at the store with no intention of buying anything. They had simply come to kibitz."
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LP transfers of above material. Includes covers, label and notes.