Harpsichordist Fernando Valenti is featured in this week’s installment of The Music Treasury, hosted by Dr Gary Lemco. The show airs from 19:00 — 21:00, PDT on Stanford’s KZSU, with live streaming at kzsulive.stanford.edu. The show will feature works by Bach, Scarlatti, and Handel. [The appended notes derived from Wikipedia.]
Fernando Valenti, harpsichord
Fernando Valenti (born New York, NY, 4 December 1926 – died Red Bank, NJ, 6 September 1990) was an American harpsichordist. After studying with José Iturbi and Ralph Kirkpatrick and débuting in 1950, he recorded extensively, especially in the 1950s, and taught for forty years, until his death. One of his most-noted students was Igor Kipnis. His recordings of Bach (two outstanding early recordings for the Lyrichord Discs label) and Scarlatti (29 LPs with 346 sonatas for Westminster Records, recorded 1951 – 1961, another 8 sonatas for Music Guild in 1962, and a final set of 12 previously recorded sonatas for the Musical Heritage Society in 1964) were highly regarded, and he was regularly mentioned in the pages of National Review by William F. Buckley Jr. In one of the odder musical pairings of the 1960s, Valenti was on the same bill as Jimi Hendrix on Thanksgiving night, November 28, 1968, at New York’s historic Philharmonic Hall.
Mr. Valenti liked to mix his recital pieces with offhand commentary from the stage, and he was an engaging television personality. He liked to describe one intricate, crossing-hands piece by Scarlatti as ”the TV Sonata – not much to listen to but fun to watch.” Beyond his charm, Mr. Valenti had the kind of technique and musical energy that were reflected in the 330 Scarlatti sonatas he recorded for the Westminster label. Mr. Valenti also recorded the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto of Bach with Leopold Stokowski for CBS Records. His most recent recording was Bach’s ”Goldberg” Variations for Pro Arte. Among the other conductors with whom he performed were Bruno Walter, Serge Koussevitzky, Fritz Reiner and Pablo Casals.
Mr. Valenti’s efforts to raise a near-forgotten 18th-century instrument from the dead to the levels of popularity it enjoys today were divided between concerts and his students. Besides his activities at Yale, he founded the harpsichord departments at the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute, and the California Institute of the Arts.
Program List:
Bach: 6 Little Preludes, BWV 933-938
Handel: Violin Sonata in G Minor, Op. 1, No. 2 (w/Olevsky)
Scarlatti: Violin Sonata in E Minor, K. 81 (w/Olevsky)
Scarlatti: Sonata in G Major, K. 325
Bach: English Suite No. 1 in A Major, BWV 896
Bach: Fantasia in C Minor, BWV 906
Scarlatti: Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 545
Scarlatti: Sonata in B Minor, K. 27
Scarlatti: Sonata in D Major, K. 535
Handel: Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 1, No. 5 (w/Olevsky)
Bach: Toccata in D Major, BWV 912
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050 (w/Stokowski)
