SCRIABIN: Preludes, Vol. 1

This specially-priced (3 CDs for the price of 2) boxed set spans from Scriabin's first large-scale orchestral work, his Piano Concerto (1897), to Prometheus (1909-10), his last completed piece (which incidentally also features an important part for solo piano). It thus includes the lion's share of his orchestral output - excepting the unfinished, mythical Mysterium - and shows his development from a young man brought up on Chopin and Tchaikovsky into one of the most original composers the world has ever known.

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Less than three years have passed since Yevgeny Sudbin's remarkable début on disc: a Scarlatti recital which caused reviewers to compare the then 25-year4 old pianist favourably to Horowitz and Pletnev. The following Rachamninov disc cause Piano Magazine (UK) to describe him as 'a major world-class artist'. The latest offering - an intriguing double-bill of Tchaikovsky's and Medtner's First Piano Concertos - was released previously this year, earning him an 'Editor's Choice' in the Gramophone. The grounds for that distinction, as given in the magazine, are certainly just as apt for the present Scriabin recital: 'Yevgeny Sudbin's performance here fairly explodes with imagination, feeling and desire. Here, one feels, is a pianist hungry to test himself intellectually and emotionally as well as technically.'

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Scriabin' cycle of Piano Sonatas is one of the most visionary and dramatic in the canon.

SCRIABIN: Symphony No. 3 / Le Poeme de l'extase (Piano Trans

SCRIABIN: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2

This multi-album set of piano works by Scriabin is the fourth and final installment in Dmitri Alexeev’s monumental endeavor to record Scriabin’s entire oeuvre for the piano on Brilliant Classics, an eight-album collection that includes the earlier Complete Preludes, Complete Etudes, and Complete Piano Sonatas. This set gathers all the works that do not belong to the uniform cycles of the previous three releases, and the title captures three interesting trends in this huge range of opus numbers spanning 25 years, without being overly prescriptive.

The Mazurkas represent a youthful devotion to Chopin that matured into lifelong inspiration; the many Poemes (whether or not they bear that specific title) are emblematic of the imagery and emotional and spiritual content with which the works are imbued; and the Impromptus evoke Scriabin’s mold-breaking compositional freedom and the genius of his idiosyncratic stream of consciousness and individual pianism. There are other noteworthy genres here with an important place in his piano output, including sonata-form movements that ultimately would be stand-alone pieces, nocturnes, other dances, and a pair of album leaves. Many of these pieces provide this collection with valuable continuity, constituting bridges in the development of the composer’s art and pianism between the individual sonatas, etudes and preludes that feature in the previous volumes. Or they provide context: for example, the three pieces of Opus 51 given here are the companions to the Prelude Op.51 No.2 that featured alone in the previous prelude cycle. As such they are not a “catch all” but a worthy and indispensable final piece of the puzzle depicting this extraordinary creator.

Can a composer like Alexander Scriabin be associated with any tradition at all, given the uniqueness of his musical language? Initially focusing on piano compositions, Scriabin later expanded to larger orchestral works, crafting five symphonies between 1899 and 1910. A noticeable evolution in composition unfolds, transitioning from a late Romantic style to a more modernistic approach. Evolving from late Romanticism to modernism, Scriabin drew inspiration from symbolist poetry and philosophical figures. Envisioning himself as a musical messiah to change the world, his Second Symphony provides a glimpse of this eccentric vision.

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This CD features the acclaimed Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen with piano works by Alexander Scriabin, which have become his signature pieces in concert. Olli Mustonen has been hailed by The Sunday Times as, “a living dream of pianism, having broken through an expressive barrier that other players do not know exists.”

REVIEW:

So far as I know, only two pianists have recorded comprehensive Scriabin solo-piano cycles. One is Michael Ponti; the other is Maria Lettberg, a Riga-born Swedish national residing in Berlin, who lived with this repertoire for years, and even wrote a doctoral thesis on Scriabin. She recorded all of Scriabin’s solo piano works with opus numbers between 2004 and 2007 for a co-production between the Capriccio label and Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Unlike Ponti, with his horribly-engineered and ill-tuned instrument, Lettberg enjoys the advantage of a beautifully regulated concert grand and resplendent, lifelike engineering. She revels in the composer’s dynamic extremes and inner-voice labyrinths both real and implied. Her big, juicy sonority and refined articulation consistently address the sensual element that perpetually lurks underneath the surface of nearly every composition, from the early, Chopin-influenced Preludes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Waltzes, and sundry short pieces to the harmonically ambiguous, intensely mystical late sonatas and poems. Granted, you won’t encounter the ice in the fire revealed throughout the younger Richter’s incisive live Second, Fifth, or Ninth sonatas, nor the jackhammer impact of Horowitz’s repeated chords in Vers la flame or his trills in the Tenth sonata. At the same time, Lettberg can unleash enough fervent momentum to help tighten looser-knit works like the Fantasie Op. 28 and the rarely played Allegro Appassionato Op. 4.

A bonus DVD features Lettberg in excerpts from different sonatas interspersed with discussions about the music and a multi-media project called “Mysterium”, where video artist Andreas Schmidt reinterprets the music in terms of abstract manipulations of color. While Lettberg may not displace favorite versions of specific works, her overall consistency, meticulous technique, and total identification with Scriabin’s idiom deserve nothing less than our highest rating. Capriccio’s bargain price is enough to forgive the pianist’s poorly organized booklet notes, although they contain many interesting quotations from the composer.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10, Jed Distler)

A new precious chapter has been added to Mariangela Vacatello's project of complete recording of Alexander Scriabin’s piano sonatas. A record series, to which the second volume is now added, that becomes a virtuosic journey into the world of sonatas where, as Guido Salvetti illustrates in the accompanying notes: "They thus reflect the composer's entire artistic itinerary: from the fiery romantic gestures of Liszt to the dissolution of rationality in the more symbolic esotericism." The sonatas date from 1891, in the last months of study at the Moscow Conservatory, and 1913.
In this new publication, Mariangela Vacatello delves with a personal touch into the creative plots of the sonatas n. 2 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8, revealing its expressive complexities and countless emotional cues. A new record release that reflects the intense and virtuosic exploratory research of the pianist, an opportunity to rediscover the creative and human universe of the Russian composer in its expressive and narrative density".