Scarlatti Portfolio ...

The San Francisco Ballet once again staged Scarlatti Portfolio, the score Benjamin Lees originally prepared for the company in 1979 to choreography by Lew Christensen. After its highly successful premiere it was subsequently programmed for several seasons. The new performances ran from February-April 1988.

As an orchestral suite it was first performed in New York by the Y Chamber Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz. Since then the Delaware Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Sacramento Symphony Orchestra and Bangor Symphony Orchestra have presented it.

The performances September 28, 1989, by Marin Alsop and the Richmond (VA) Symphony Orchestra drew critical acclaim from Carl Dolmetsch in the Virginia Gazette. "In 1979, Benjamin Lees, one of our major composers in this era who, though now 65, remains undeservedly obscure, fashioned an orchestral suite from themes of seven of the harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti to be choreographed by the San Francisco Ballet. He did more than merely orchestrate these themes, setting them into an idiom of his own that is, nonetheless, not avant-garde. The result is something akin to Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances or Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, and equally delightful, especially as played on this occasion with ease and expertise."

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