Scarlatti through the drywall
Scarlatti's Sonata in C came through the quite beige wall of a downtown condo this afternoon. I stood and listened and read the words on the fire alarm on the wall. (I have cranked the audio. There is too much humming from the hallway machinery, but you can kinda make it out.): I knew it was Scarlatti's Sonata in C because the pianist alone in the room on the other side of the wall had played it for us up close minutes before. And explained how remarkable it was that isolated Scarlatti, court composer in Spain, had produced his brilliant music quite apart from the main currents and personalities of European classical music. The pianist's name is Lillian. We had met her as she was walking to the piano room in the condo building. Shelagh said her hair, longer on one side, looked great. We laughed that it was a hairstyle last fashionable in the 80s—and now again in Lillian's 80s. Lillian was on her way to practise and was carrying scores by Mozart, Cho...