Hyperion Records

We do not know anything about the origins of Alessandro Scarlatti’s work, except that it is found in manuscripts in Paris and Münster as a sonata for string quartet ‘senza cembalo’, but as a concerto with continuo and additional ripieno string parts as the first of a set of Six Concertos published in London around 1740. It is likely, however, that the concerto version is not Scarlatti’s work, and was cobbled together in eighteenth-century England; the additional parts certainly do not add anything to the original.

from notes by Peter Holman © 2003