Scott Ross was an American-born harpsichordist who spent much of his life in France and attended the conservatories of Nice and Paris. He was notably the first musician to record the complete keyboard sonatas – 555 in all – of Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757).

In 1985, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Scarlatti’s birth, French radio broadcast a weekly series of Scarlatti sonatas played by Scott Ross. By the end of the series, Ross had recorded the world’s first complete version of the 555 Scarlatti sonatas. Many of the sonatas had never been recorded before, even though a limited selection had featured in the repertoire of major pianists – including Horowitz, Michelangeli, Gieseking, Meyer, Haskil and Gilels – for decades.

Scott Ross’s personal favourite among the sonatas was K208, which he described as: “the most beautiful, even if it is also the slowest, and the happiest – it’s the sunniest of all of them.”