“15 months, 98 sessions, and some 8,000 takes”: that’s the tally Zachary Woolfe offers in his recent New York Times profile of harpsichordist Scott Ross, who would have turned 70 on March 1 this year. Those marathon figures describe one mammoth recording project: the complete sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Ross achieved his goal with the release of a 34 CD set of these recordings in 1988.  The set was reissued in 2014 by Warner Classics. An artist I had a long conversation with in the fall of 2019 spoke to me of her love for Scarlatti, which led me to Lucas DeBargue’s great piano performances of Scarlatti. Soon I learned that DeBarque’s Scarlatti was by his own admission heavily influenced by Scott Ross , whose performances DeBarque calls “without compare” and “definitive.”

I found the 2014 Ross collection for a very reasonable price, and Christmas 2019 revealed this treasure, ready for the listening, beneath our family’s Christmas tree.

I’m a little sad when I think of that 2019 Christmas. It was the last Christmas we celebrated with my father-in-law, who passed away about a month later. It was also the last time my whole family could be together, as Christmas 2020 was in pandemic time, and the very first time we did not celebrate with our children Ian and Jenny–at least, not in the same physical location. (I am very grateful to Zoom for the reunion we did have.)

Reading the article on Scott Ross, I feel something has come full circle, and I have hope despite the long chill fingers of despair and isolation that seem to have had us all in their grip for so long. Woolfe ends his article with Ross’s words from an interview just before he died, and I am reminded that even one so impatient as I may nevertheless endure what must yet be:

“I have a quality — a vice, perhaps,” he says. “It’s called perseverance, which isn’t the same thing as patience. Patience I don’t possess, but perseverance? You’re talking to someone who recorded 555 Scarlatti sonatas. Well, that didn’t require any patience. I have no patience for anything whatsoever.”

See you tomorrow.