<<  -- 6 --  John Bell Young    SCRIABIN ON DISC

INDIVIDUAL SONATAS

1. Szidon and Ogdon rule in this sprawling testament to decaying romanticism, offering big-boned but detailed readings that make it seem a more mature and coherent work than it really is. Ogdon's sinuous sensibility, which holds it together rhythmically instead of allowing it to drift in fits and starts, is an asset here.

2. In this most opulent of the sonatas, Szidon's Brazilian sensibility proves an advantage. His is an oceanic performance that gives emphasis to the work's undulating hemiolas as they reach across bar lines and destabilize phrase periods. It is eerily alluring and powerful. Sofronitsky highlights the uneasy turbulence of that sonorous ocean, which in his hands teems with exotic life. (Arlecchino; the recording is actually culled from two performances recorded at the Scriabin museum). Michel Block also delivers a subtle, sweetly ingratiating reading that expands and contracts mightily like the breath of the Brahmin (ProPiano). Samuel Feinberg's spectacular performance astounds for it's finesse and rhythmic freedom and imagination (Melodiya). Ogdon's virtuoso treatment is not so much oceanic and expansive as it is imperial and overbearing, turning every melodic line into a puzzle as if he were challenging the listener to figure it all out. It grates on the ear for its oddly inhumane approach, which dismisses any suggestion of warmth. Michael Lewin is a musician's musician, and his big boned performance of the 2nd sonata is at once austere and authoritative (Centaur).

3. Again Sofronitsky is magisterial and magical. Just as Scriabin intended, each section has its own character (Philips Great Pianists of the 20th Century). Szidon plays it grandly, too, and the concluding Presto con fuoco becomes a whirlwind in his hands. Horowitz gives the sonata a run for its money, bringing to it his customary and usual flair, as well as an unusually visceral feel for heightened drama (Sony). Recorded in the 1950s, it's a taut and thrilling ride that pays homage to color and sensation, and for its vigor, intensity, uncompromising energy, and savoir faire, is on a par with Sofronitsky (RCA). Michel Block's ardent lyricism, even in the most bristling pages, is refreshing and energizes the sonata admirably. Kudos go to Gilels's gracious and spirited reading, which values something that eludes most interpreters: the work's largesse and humanity (Melodiya/BMG). Boris Bekhterev offers an unusually rich, magisterial reading complimented by the naturalistic engineering of Phoneix Records (PH00606). It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Gieseking's performance is fantastic, and the only equal to Sofronitsky's. Indeed, it is as if the man had a thousand ears capable of discerning and conveying every strand of the polyphony all at once (Music & Arts 1070).

4. Sofronitsky's stratospheric 4th soars on wings, as it were, and into the stratosphere (Philips). Witness his volcanic but sharply etched manipulation of the thorny rhythms in the Prestissimo volando; which Laredo naively turns into the vulgar bombast of 'I Got Rhythm'. Sofronitsky knows better. Szidon is immensely compelling, always judiciously measured and cumulatively gauged. Young Halida Dinova emerges in her debut disc as a natural Scriabinist, and makes a particularly strong showing in an unusually vivacious, if over-pedaled, reading (Dorian). Pletnev offers a sumptuous performance too, notable for its creamy legato and headstrong rhythm, if perhaps a bit heavy-handed and too by-the-book rather than fanciful (Virgin). Bekhterev again turns in a powerful, idiomatic but also exceptionally lyrical reading that builds judiciously and inevitably to its white hot climax.

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