Simeon Flick is arriving fashionably late to the Scarlatti party.

It would not be an exaggeration to say this album––the longest delayed musical dream of his life––has been 30 years in the making. And before and during those three decades, many other classical guitarists have also transcribed, recorded, and released collections of Scarlatti sonatas.

So why, with middle age almost a memory, and amidst a world in turmoil, would Flick join the fray now? Why would he choose to add his rasping voice to the overwhelming din of superlative records and live videos by prodigious virtuosos who have already foreclosed on the intellectual property of this well-traveled yet less renowned Baroque genius? Why bother?

Why not?

If one can’t be the first or the best, one might as well try to be different, and that is how Flick chooses to enter this stuffy soiree: Through the service elevator in a gaudy prom tux.

Very few––if any––of those other guitarists can claim production, engineering, mastering, and cover art credits on their albums, for instance, much less operate their own recording studios (Flick also has 8 singer/songwriter albums in his catalog, the 2nd and 3rd of which contain original compositions for classical guitar, the latter 5 coming out of the same Blue Chair Studio).

And whereas most professional guitarists are fleeting delvers in this composer’s oeuvre, using Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard works as virtuosic vehicles through which to self-aggrandize before briskly moving on, Flick has made these sonatas the principal area of his part-time concentration, having instead chosen to be a long-haul vehicle for the music.

So little is known about the composer himself, but one can at least hear the geography of his life emanating from these compositions, There are the pre-flamenco, post-Moorish folk nuances of 18th century Spain and Portugal, and deceptively simple two-and-three-part Neapolitan polyphonies that in these twelve instances fluently translate in a tailor-made way (it is a puzzling paradox that these brilliant sonatas were composed on such a monochromatic instrument like the harpsichord; in that light, adapting them to the more tonally versatile and euphonious nylon-stringed guitar constitutes an instant upgrade).

Improvement is the aspirant result of transcription (the process of adapting a composition from one instrument to another), and Flick more than compensates for his hobbyist’s technique with an ingenious flair for arrangement and interpretation. While many guitarists have too rapidly cobbled together versions that cut cop-out corners or succumb to the guitar’s compressed pitch range and six-finger disadvantage, Flick has tinkered for years to find ways to preserve some of Scarlatti’s original voice leading and myriad eccentricities––Phrygian cadences! Remote modulations! Tone-cluster chords! Syncopations galore!––without excessively transposing keys, detuning more than one string, employing a custom guitar with more than 6 strings, or fudging his way through via excessive, exaggerated, or otherwise disruptive rubato. And he does so with aesthetic flair, bringing the guitar’s textural breadth to his wide-angle interpretations.

For the most part, the sublime melodies remain roped off behind glass, but no one said anything about the “accompaniment.” For instance, in order to preserve some of the motifs occurring in the bass parts, Flick occasionally unisons or temporarily overlaps the low-end line across and above the melody (K. 34, K. 175, K. 208, K. 213, K. 322, K. 377, K. 446, K. 474). And observe the robust arrangement that hews closer to the original in album opener K. 380’s fuller chords and more faithful pitch placement, not to mention the double ornament––two notes in an F# octave interval trilling simultaneously up to G# and back––in measure 6 of the first half, which is difficult even on the native harpsichord but has been unprecedented on the guitar until now.

For this particular collection, and with the listeners’ optimal enjoyment in mind, Flick has chosen to present only the catchiest of sonatas here, hence “Scarlatti’s Greatest Hits,” and in a running order not unlike a pop album, with an emphasis on enjoyable dynamic flow and engaging key and tempo variety (manically jubilant hard rocker K. 175 in A minor/major dives directly into the elegantly somber chill-out ballad K. 34 in D minor––the saddest of all keys). There is still plenty of technical wizardry on display, but these carefully chosen selections favor the augmented outreach of hummable tunes.

All this having been said, and with an accompanying sigh of resignation on behalf of this composer and performer, most procurers still won’t experience these recordings as anything other than background music for formal parties or other social gatherings, dinner dates, solitary work or scholastic study, or domestic chores. And that’s okay; imperfections will more covertly evade notice, and there are a handful of listeners to whom the scrappily earnest performances of these innovative arrangements will break through and resonate in a different way from those of the typical classical guitarist, and that is more than sufficient justification for this album’s existence.