Scriabin, Alexander (1872-1915)

[BBMmk2]

Scriabin's piano music is the pinnacle of this composer's output. I have Artur Pizarro and off the top I can't think of the other artists' names, at this point! Arghh!

[HighlandDougie]

Used to sink to the very depths, largely due to the orchestral music, and then I heard Arcadi Volodos's utterly mesmerising performance of the 'White Mass' sonata (part of his 2010 Vienna Musikverein recital - which is also one of the best sounding piano recordings I've ever come across, especially in its SACD incarnation). I'm now very much floated by his piano music and have greatly enjoyed getting to know the piano sonatas (courtesy of Roberto Szidon and Anatol Ugorski) and the Etudes and Preludes (courtesy of Olli Mustonen et al). Hearing Yevgeny Sudbin play one of the sonatas last summer (when he was very much "in sorts", unlike at his recent Wigmore Hall recital) was a musical highlight of 2014 for me.

I do, though, still struggle with the orchestral music. I recently bought Melodiya's Svetlanov 4 CD set of the symphonies et al on the surmise that Svetlanov's somewhat unsubtle approach might suit Scriabin's music - and so it proves. The Poem of Ecstasy (a live performance) couldn't be more over the top if it tried. However, even with Svetlanov (and Richter)'s greatest efforts, for me, the jury's out on the orchestral works but then I go back to that performance by Arcadi Volodos and I'd forgive Scriabin almost anything.

[jayne lee wilson]

A few years ago I got the sumptuous Exton/Pony HDCD set of the 5 Symphonies (Russian SSO/Svetlanov rec. 16-20 May 1996/ set issued 2002), and I recall a series of insomniac dawns enriched by the orchestral black-forest tableaux of the first three. What sonic splendours! Sunrises, sunsets and northern lights danced about my room...synaesthesie exstatique!
But when it came to Extase and Prometee - I still got nowhere. I just don't get them, on and on they go and always seem longer than the vastnesses of the Divin or the C Minor...

I'm intrigued by the thought of how Segerstam might project them.... But the past is another country, and if I listened to them now...?

[LeMartinPecheur]

So does Scriabin float or sink your boat?

Um, that's a tricky one! Closest might be 'not yet launched' or 'stranded on a sandbank'

In concerts I'm surprised to find I've heard 4 sonatas and 8 preludes live and I've bought a good few CDs - Austbo in the sonatas, the Horowitz centenary compilation and a Sudbin anthology plus the Naxos Preludes Vol 1 (Zarafiants). They're all OK-ish or better when I listen to them, but somehow they don't really click and draw me back. The discs I feel most inclined to revisit right now are the Muti orchestral works, but then I'm always a sucker for hi-fi orchestral extravaganzas

Should I perhaps throw the Austbo sonatas away and try another set? Advice please!

[Richard Barrett]

By and large I'd say a definite 'float' although at this point I'd say that the earlier music appeals to me far more than the later. I do find the 'splurge' of the big late orchestral pieces overblown, and the rambling later piano works lead me to switch off... was it the 5th sonata that Sudbin gave as an encore in his recent Wigmore recital? Did nothing for me.

I wouldn't call the 5th sonata a "late" piece though; the last four sonatas (7-10), plus some of the smaller piano pieces written around and after them, are some of the most original and indeed concisely-structured music of the early 20th century in my opinion. I agree though that in his relatively short life he didn't quite get the measure of orchestral writing.

[Belgrove]

Horowitz's RCA and Columbia studio sets together with live recordings are being reissued in a remastered 3-disc box set by Sony in April.

[Barbirollians]

Solomon's recording of the Piano Concerto should not be forgotten . Surprised to see that Warner have not reissued Muti's set of the symphonies - saw him conduct the Divine Poem at the RFH about the same time as the recording. All very wild and dark but possibly unwise to have preceded it with Perlman on utterly dazzling form in the Tchaikovsky Concerto .

[gradus]

I was lucky enough to attend a late Scriabin piano recital this week by a pianist for whom the pieces hold no terrors. Its not music that I am familiar with but it was as extraordinary an experience as you would expect. They were all late works, three preludes form op67, the 7th sonata, Poeme-Nocturne, three studies from op65, Poemes op 69,the 10th sonata and Vers la Flamme. Astonishingly the elderly Bluthner remained more in less in tune - 25 note chords notwithstanding! The pianist was the tremendous Yuri Paterson-Olenich who is to play the same programme in Berlin on 9 May as part of the Berlin Piano Festival. Its quite a lineup with recitals by Sudbin, Hamelin, Lortie, Melnikov and Lifschitz.

[Belgrove]

Decca have released a complete works box-set comprising 18 discs, including new releases of particular works. A `bonus' disc of Scriabin through the ages has recordings by Horowitz, Cherkassky, Richter, Pletnev, Kissin, Trifonov and Grosvenor. At around two pounds a disc, the set is something of a bargain.

[Belgrove]

Peter Donohoe is performing all the sonatas in a single concert (gulp!)

https://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=19205

Would love to go, but will be on another continent then.

[Serial_Apologist]

Peter Donohoe is performing all the sonatas in a single concert (gulp!)

https://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=19205

Would love to go, but will be on another continent then.

Actually, the later ones are quite short - at most about 10 minutes apiece after No.5, I would think. It wouldn't be a long recital.

[ahinton]

Actually, the later ones are quite short - at most about 10 minutes apiece after No.5, I would think. It wouldn't be a long recital.

It would probably be at least 130 minutes plus interval. It's a great programme, actually and I heard Jonathan Powell, a leading authority on the composer, give it splendidly some years ago in London and was surprised by how the whole takes on another life as a multi-movement work that traces most of the composer's development. Good for Peter Donohoe; this is rarely done. I see from the link that he's not presenting them in chronological order as Jonathan Powell has done and he's taking two intervals rather than just the one after Sonata No. 5 that Jonathan did.

[Pianorak]

Scriabin: Late Piano Works opp 62 to 74 (Roger Woodward on Etcetera Records, 1991)
Scriabin: The Complete Piano Sonatas (Peter Donohoe on SommCD262-2, 2016)

[BBMmk2]

Who has recorded the best cycle of Scriabin's Symphonies? I include The Poem of fire, in this. I have Gergeiv's and Muti's.

[Joseph K]

Currently listening to sonata no. 10 by Scriabin, played by Roberto Szidon.

Absolutely amazing, transcendentally ecstatic, sensuous, multi-coloured, glittering, crystalline, iridescent, perfumed... mystical visionary. And for me, it has to be Szidon - his recordings of sonatas nos. 6 - 10 had such a deep impact on me when I first got to know them that I am now somewhat resistant to hearing other renditions, the works are in a sense 'trapped' inside these particular recordings, for me.