Peter Seivewright - Work With Galuppi's Sonatas

Work With Galuppi's Sonatas

Although he has released several recordings, including discs of Carl Nielsen, Victor Bendix, and Louis Glass, he is perhaps most known for his current endeavor to record all 90 of the keyboard sonatas of Baldassare Galuppi for The Divine Art record company. This has involved him in personally researching manuscripts of Galuppi's sonatas in Venice, and reportedly in editing and publishing them in due course as well.

Reviews of Seivewright's Galuppi have been varied. Some have been impressed by Galuppi's sonatas themselves, using Domenico Scarlatti as a benchmark with one reviewer calling them "far more appealing than Scarlatti sonatas,"; others have made the same comparison to Galuppi's detriment ("the individual pieces lack the character and sparkling invention so typical of Scarlatti").

Seivewright's playing has also been evaluated variously, with many reviewers applauding it. Reviewer Gerald Fenech terms him "an enthusiastic and technically accomplished pianist" who "plays with great conviction and flair in all the sonatas presented here." Kevin Sutton, however, complains that "The halting playing, lack of line tension and the image that I was listening to a pianist playing over, rather than through a composer continually disturbed me. (Glenn Gould would have been proud.)"

Nevertheless, it is clear that Seivewright is performing an important service in renewing interest in Galuppi's long-neglected keyboard output, and one that should help broaden our knowledge of the composer.