First and foremost,
Domenico Scarlatti is regarded as the greatest composer of binary harpsichord sonatas of all time, and that is as it should be: he wrote more than 600 of them and many are recorded and played constantly. However, early in his Italian career,
Scarlatti developed a proven track record as a composer of sacred music, some of it under the watchful eye of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, believed by many at the time as the top composer of the age. The fact most readily observed in regard to
Domenico's sacred music is that his Stabat mater, composed in 1717 or 1718, was the work within that genre replaced in Rome by Giovanni Pergolesi's Stabat mater around 1735. The
Scarlatti work was conceived in a different style, to different strictures; while it has become the most recorded of
Scarlatti's sacred works, it definitely suffers when paired with the Pergolesi owing to its immediacy and familiarity. On Coro's Iste Confessor,
the Sixteen led by
Harry Christophers widely opt for
Scarlatti's own, other sacred music as filler to the Stabat mater with results fairer to the composer and quite favorable to listeners.
Among the works included is the tight, succinct, and enchanting motet Iste Confessor and
Scarlatti's Missa Breve "La stella," which has a glorious setting of the Credo in addition to many other fine musical attributes. The singing of
the Sixteen is transparent and fluid throughout; continuo parts are restrained and all of the performances are strong; particularly that of the Stabat mater. While it may have been displaced by Pergolesi's offering, that doesn't mean it isn't a remarkable work on its own --
Scarlatti's Stabat is scored for 10 voices -- SSSSAATTBB -- that function with independence, yet coalesce at key points; standard comparisons with Palestrina are not terribly off the mark, but the work is considerably more Baroque in tone and style than anything from the sixteenth century.
When this recording was first issued by the now-defunct Collins Classics label in 1998, it pretty much had the field all to itself, and this was one of the first discs reissued when
Harry Christophers' own label, CORO, was set up to restore the various deleted
Sixteen releases to the catalog. However, an extraordinary number of recordings of
Scarlatti's sacred music have appeared since, even the reissue of Iste Confessor. Nevertheless, it's still a contender, given the splendid performance and the warmth of the recording; it remains as good as any way in to the sacred music of
Domenico Scarlatti.