Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.
Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.
Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.
The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.
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The safest next step.
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This D minor sonata is crisp and driving, built from jumps and call-and-response figures that generate rhythmic tension and a sense of urgent motion rather than long lyrical lines. Technically, you will face notably Analysis harmonique (3.6/5) — you must quickly parse the harmonic shifts and anticipate hand relocations to secure bass-to-melody transitions — and Baroque ornaments (3.1/5), where clean execution of small trills and appoggiaturas requires precise finger articulation and control of the lower finger rather than relying on wrist motion. The piece belongs to Scarlatti's corpus of keyboard sonatas from the Baroque period, where he experiments with contrast and idiomatic keyboard effects. I do not give a reference interpretation here because I am not 100% certain of a single widely agreed recording for this specific sonata.