Polina Osetinskaya

Bach And Scarlatti Polina Osetinskaya

Polina Osetinskaya's performing art is known for unusual programmes and paradoxical and, at the same time, deeply considered juxtaposition of composers' names, styles and ages. Apart from the Italian Concerto, in which the Great Cantor paid a tribute to the Italian tradition of harpsichord music, his Protestant chorales and polyphonic cycles written in the Baroque age seemed endlessly distant from Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas with their exuberant southern, Neapolitan temperament and joyful vigour of motility. But today we look at them differently. Amazingly, modern culture not only smoothed their musical 'contradiction', but also allowed us to hear a certain commonality and unity in this music. The unity of unhurried contemplation about the fleeting life and the eternity of being - something that a modern man lacks so badly. The CD contains five Scarlatti's sonatas and J. S. Bach's Italian Concerto and chorales transcribed for the piano by Alexander Siloti, Egon Petri and Wilhelm Kempff.