Ralph Kirkpatrick

Ralph Kirkpatrick is a whole musician for having wrestled seriously with diverse apsects of his field. The ideal of the whole musician--composer, performer, teacher--was prevalent in the 17th and 18th centuries, Mr. Kirkpatrick's special field of interest, and indeed was superbly exemplified by Domeniico Scarlatti, the subject of Mr. Kirkpatrick's biography. The altered social role of the musician today, and specialization within music have made adherence to such an ideal the exception rather than the rule (the late Arthur Schnable is said to have consciously and zealously striven toward it). As far as I know Mr. Kirkpatrick is not a composer, but to his eminence as a harpsichord performer and as a teacher he has in the past few months added a reputation as an exceptional writer on music, a writer furthermore who deals with his subject historically and technically, as well as aesthetically.

These references to Mr. Kirpatrick's writings (specifically to his Scarlatti biography and his edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations) would find no place in this discussion of his Sanders Theatre recital yesterday afternoon did I not fell that they might help convey the sense of dedication with which he seems to approach specific composers as well as the craft of performing. Furthermore the fruits of this scholarship allow Mr. Kirkpatrick to attain an expressive range which is at once bounded by historical conventions and freely guided by his own taste and sensibility.

Yesterday's program consisted of The Goldberg Variations by Bach and ten late sonatas by Scarlatti. These sonatas are one movement works, more nearly resembling the form of a Baroque dance movement than the first movement of a Classical sonata.

Bach and Scarlatti were precise contemporaries yet the coupling of their works produced a striking juxta-position. The immensely powerful, almost gruff joyfulness of Bach's final variation and the lofty simplicity of the closing aria still lingered in my mind as Mr. Kirkpatrick returned after intermission and performed in immediate succession three 1) major Scarlatti sonatas which displayed to an extreme degree elements of exotic Spanish fury. These elements are all the more powerful in Scarlatti because they seem to burst forth from the refined and lyrical Italian style in which he was trained. For me, Mr. Kirkpatrick's playing reached its pack in these works. The deliberateness of his tempi and the tension of his phrasing gave the impression of enormous energy just barely under control, yet the control was always there and by its very presence indicated the extent of that energy.