Scriabin, Alexander (1872-1915)

[Bryn]

It'll crop up s/h somewhere soon, no doubt.
A quick Amazon search didn't reveal it though (but Bryn is good at hunting stuff down so perhaps he'll find it for you); I'm not sure if there are back copies of single issues available, but it might be worth a phone call to find out.

I'd say. bide your time. Copies will turn up in charity shops before too long. Some may have, already.

[RichardB]

I think I may have found the Rudy record, on youtube

Regarding the first generation of Soviet composers - I did once check out some Roslavets, though unfortunately it sounded like Scriabin devoid of the all the poetic/mystical/voluptuous etc. expressive elements. Any pieces of his or other composers that I should check out?

Yes, that's the one. The original double LP also contained the 6th and 7th sonatas and the Deux Poèmes op.63, which were presumably excluded in order to keep the remainder on a single CD. Now that this is no longer an issue it would be nice to have the whole collection put back together - the sequence from the 6th sonata to the op.74 pieces with everything in chronological order was almost like one enormous unfolding composition.

Rather than Roslavets, whose music always sounds less interesting to me than I hope it's going to be (it has its "revolutionary" aspects but the material seems vague and unmemorable), I was thinking of the three piano sonatas by Sergei Protopopov, and the quartertone Preludes by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. But I'm really not an expert on the repertoire, for that you'd have to go to Jonathan Powell.

[Mandryka]

Joseph: I wonder if you picked up a copy of the February 2022 BBC MM CD, with Garrick Ohlsson playing Sonatas 3, 8, 9, and 10 (Wigmore Hall, 2015), and Alexander Gadjiev playing some other pieces (Maida Vale, 2019), and if so what you thought of it.

https://www.classical-music.com/maga...february-2022/

I have it and I can let you have the files if you want. It's OK, just not shivery like Sofronitsky an Horowitz. Good sound.

[Mandryka]

Really enjoying Kuschnerova's CD over breakfast, this one

https://open.spotify.com/album/4wYaH6jg1p1IIcmdf1pGCN

[Joseph K]

Rather than Roslavets, whose music always sounds less interesting to me than I hope it's going to be (it has its "revolutionary" aspects but the material seems vague and unmemorable), I was thinking of the three piano sonatas by Sergei Protopopov, and the quartertone Preludes by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. But I'm really not an expert on the repertoire, for that you'd have to go to Jonathan Powell.

I agree about Roslavets, and will check out your suggestions, thanks. Incidentally, after a few interruptions I just now finished listening to Rudy's eighth piano sonata and it just might be my favourite recording of this piece, or at the very least, one of. I agree they really ought to reissue the original thing altogether on CD - but I will make do for now with what's on youtube - I look forward to listening to all the other pieces on the playlist...

I have it and I can let you have the files if you want. It's OK, just not shivery like Sofronitsky an Horowitz. Good sound.

That would be great, thanks. Send me a PM.

[gurnemanz]

A few years ago Brilliant Classics brought out an invaluable 9CD compilation of mostly live recordings from Vladimir Sofronitzky. I snapped it up for not much money. It's still around secondhand

One disc is from a live recital at the Maly Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire in 1960 (according to MusicWeb he plays Scriabin's own piano). He married the composer's daughter. Wiki comments: "Having met Scriabin's daughter only after her father's death, Sofronitsky never met the composer. Nevertheless, his wife vouched that the pianist was the most authentic interpreter of her late father's works."

Sound is a bit clangy but certainly good enough to experience Sofronitzky's brilliant musicianship and have the feeling of getting close to the composer.

[Joseph K]

A few years ago Brilliant Classics brought out an invaluable 9CD compilation of mostly live recordings from Vladimir Sofronitzky. I snapped it up for not money. It's still around secondhand

One disc is from a live recital at the Maly Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire in 1960 (according to MusicWeb he plays Scriabin's own piano). He married the composer's daughter. Wiki comments: "Having met Scriabin's daughter only after her father's death, Sofronitsky never met the composer. Nevertheless, his wife vouched that the pianist was the most authentic interpreter of her late father's works."

Sound is a bit clangy but certainly good enough to experience Sofronitzky's brilliant musicianship and have the feeling of getting close to the composer.

[ahinton]

I'm really not an expert on the repertoire, for that you'd have to go to Jonathan Powell.

Jonathan most certainly is an expert in that repertoire and, for the record, has given several performances of the 10 numbered Scriabin piano sonatas in chronological order as a single programme with the first five in the first half and the others in the second (he's giving several of these this year to mark the composer's centenary); fo this listener, at least, it works remarkably on a second level, in that the experience is like listening to a single work that traces the composer's development as a piano composer. Peter Donohoe is another pianist who has given the 10 sonatas as a single programme but in a different order.

[Mandryka]

Jonathan most certainly is an expert in that repertoire and, for the record, has given several performances of the 10 numbered Scriabin piano sonatas in chronological order as a single programme with the first five in the first half and the others in the second (he's giving several of these this year to mark the composer's centenary); fo this listener, at least, it works remarkably on a second level, in that the experience is like listening to a single work that traces the composer's development as a piano composer. Peter Donohoe is another pianist who has given the 10 sonatas as a single programme but in a different order.

You're making it very tempting to go but it's not obvious that I'll be able to get back to Victoria in time to catch the last train to Wimbledon. I really don't fancy the night bus on Saturday night, and my days of going to a club and then on for a bagel breakfast in Brick Lane on Sunday morning are well and truly behind me.

Perhaps I should stay in The Randolph, like Charlie's aunt. I don't think my old college will put me up.

[Bryn]

You're making it very tempting to go but it's not obvious that I'll be able to get back to Victoria in time to catch the last train to Wimbledon. I really don't fancy the night bus on Saturday night, and my days of going to a club and then on for a bagel breakfast in Brick Lane on Sunday morning are well and truly behind me.

Perhaps I should stay in The Randolph, like Charlie's aunt. I don't think my old college will put me up.

I don't think you would have too much of a problem getting back from the Royal Holloway performance on November 10th. However, that concert will not comprise all 10 sonatas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOSSluCGLVk

[Serial_Apologist]

I think I may have found the Rudy record, on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpZD...DA1e8s&index=4

I currently have no. 8 on (no. 8 being my favourite Scriabin sonata, if I really had to choose). He's taking the opening at a slower than I'm used to tempo, which I like - relishing in those radiant, psychedelic harmonies.

Regarding the first generation of Soviet composers - I did once check out some Roslavets, though unfortunately it sounded like Scriabin devoid of the all the poetic/mystical/voluptuous etc. expressive elements. Any pieces of his or other composers that I should check out?

There's an early Roslavets work which has all those voluptuous qualities, the cantata Aux heurs de la nouvelle lune of 1910. Subsequent works such as the Music for String Quartet of 1916 and the third string quartet of 1920 lose some of the colouristic extravagance in preference for structural concerns which brought his music closer to Berg's - whether or not influenced by him is conjectural. Another Russian who came quite close to Scriabin's ethos was N.I.Miaskovsky, considered an important symphonist - his Sixth of 1923 being thought by some to be his best. Up to that point Miaskobvsky's music might be heard as filling a stylistic gap between Rachmaninov and Scriabin, or perhaps Glazunov and Scriabin; his later works fitted more into the Asaviev-inspired Socialist Realist aesthetic, tending towards a Gliere-like conservative-sounding nationalism.

Personally I found the later Scriabin (after the remarkable Fifth Sonata) offered diminishing returns following initial intoxication, particularly in their harmonic domain with its (for me) over-dependence on that elaborated Tristan motif chord. Combined with a more symphonically developing way with form (and moving west!) it works well in middle period Szymanowsky - piano works such as the Métopes of 1915 and especially the Third Sonata of 1917, almost Bergian in its emancipation of chromaticism and pretty overwhelming, particularly in the fugal section which follows abruptly following the dreamy slow movement. I wonder to myself if these mid period works influenced our own Frank Bridge in his Piano Sonata of 1924; Bridge's Third String Quartet of 1926 is audibly indebted to Berg's earlier String Quartet (1910). After 1920 Szymanowsky's music tends towards a more consciously national style under the influences of Stravinsky and Bartok, influenced by political events. I would also recommend the Czech Josef Suk, for his 1908 piano suite Things Lived and Dreamed, which Berg is said to have admired, and the powerful symphonic poem Zrani, of 1917, which is voluptuopusness and power epitomised![/I]!

[Joseph K]

Thanks for the recommendations, SA. Plenty to be getting on with!

[Joseph K]

Am currently listening to the Rudy Vers la flamme. Stupendous playing! Pure ecstasy. It makes me think I hadn't heard the piece before, but I know I had...

[Mandryka]

Am currently listening to the Rudy Vers la flamme. Stupendous playing! Pure ecstasy. It makes me think I hadn't heard the piece before, but I know I had...

This is the vers la flamme for me

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A0nrg7Lqfak

[Mandryka]

And here's a good 10 from HJ Lim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-ztMFCw0g&ab_channel=HJLim%EC%9E%84%ED%98%84%EC%A0%95