Unboxing the Alessandro Scarlatti Collection (Volume I)

 

As noted elsewhere, I finally succumbed to my obsessive compulsive disorder and bought this boxed set of Alessandro Scarlatti's music. And get this: I put in my order on Saturday, 4/1/23 at 2:49 pm, and it arrived on Wednesday, 4/5/23 at 5:24 pm. Is that service with a smile or what? And instead of the $75 it would cost anywhere else, I paid a mere $45 from The Julliard Store. So now we know where to take our classical music needs.

The box instead is pretty thin cardboard, and the thirty cds (30!) inside are housed in generic looking sleeves. The small booklet contained therein includes 8 pages of small text, all of them in English. So not the most impressive package...but did I mention that there are 30 cds here?

And I'm going to listen to every one of them.

Starting...now.

I don't know why we don't get Sinfonias 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, or 11...or anything after--oops. Just looked at Disc 2 to see if there was anything after 12, and guess what I found? 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, and 11. Guess it was a space issue. Which is a bit puzzling, in that Disc 1 is 44:32 long and Disc 2 is 44:15, which means you could have put all of them on one Disc--and in the proper order, too...but what do I know. Okay. 

As for this Disc One....

I don't know if I've ever heard a Flute Symphony before, but if I have, I wasn't aware of what it was and it made no impression on my consciousness... or my subconsciousness either, so far as I can discern. So when I slid Disc One into the CD player, I was expecting some thin, reedy music, flute and piano with occasional orchestral punctuation. And there was a bit of that, but there was also an almost overwhelming and frantic tumult of sound, very exciting and revivifying. So much so that I listened to the disc again later. And then several more times over the next several days. In fact, I'm listening to it right now, and it's just lovely stuff. If this first disc is an accurate example of what's to come on the next 29, I'll have to say that this is the best musical purchase I've ever made in half a century of buying music. 

Ha, that reminded me of when I was first living without my parents in Baltimore. I was working a minimum wage job at G. C. Murphy's, and there were times when I would skip lunch so that I could buy a new record. I don't have to skip meals in order to buy music anymore, but I'm just as passionate about it, and I really love to  find "new things"--especially things that have been overlooked or forgotten.

On to Disc 2. Well...soon, anyway.