<<  -- 9 --  John Bell Young    SCRIABIN ON DISC

Poèmes and character pieces. Sofronitsky recorded many of these miniatures, perhaps Scriabin's favorite and most effective means of expressing his ideas. Among the later works, each of these gems forms part of a larger tapestry, and can be interpreted, by Scriabin's own admission, as connected aesthetically one to the other. Sofronitsky's performances are without peer, and magical without exception. The two poems Op 32, for example, sizzle quietly and open themselves up like a flower in bloom as they go along, while his reading of the efflorescent delicacy of Fragilité remains one of the great miracles ever captured in recordings. Because Sofronitsky recorded many of them in concert and was naturally nervous and high-strung, he was not immune to memory slips, which crop up every now and then. There are significant ones in Caresse Dansée and in the Valse Op 38, though he covers them up expertly (he loses his place in the former and inadvertently repeats the first two pages of the latter). In any case, he invests the Valse with all the sumptuous grandeur of imperial Russia at its most splendid and refined.

Fyodorova, too, brings her x-ray ears, flawless technique, and tender heart to these works; her reading of the poems Op 69, for example, is among the great performances (though no one should discount Horowitz's colorful presentation). Achatz is emotionally generous in a number of the miniatures; and his reading of Vers la Flamme is hands down the best on record, equaling even that of Horowitz, though their ideas about the work differ. Where Horowitz exploits the fragmentary side of the work with incomparable intensity (Columbia 53472), Achatz underscores its cumulative rhythmic trajectory, and to spectacular effect, developing its amoebae-like rhythmic cells into something urgent and inevitable (BIS 119). Richter recorded it too, but he seems unsure what to do with it (Philips). It's a leaden reading that runs out of steam within the first few minutes.

The notoriously difficult Poème Tragique and Poème Satanique are brilliantly served by Fyodorova, though Kastelsky is impressive, too. Sofronitsky takes no prisoners in the former in a stunning concert performance that makes of this three-minute work something symphonic in scope and even in sound (Melodiya/BMG). The young Halida Dinova is most impressive in her all-Scriabin disc devoted to preludes and poems (Doremi 71133). A passionate, involved performer, Ms Dinova's robust interpretation of Scriabin suits the music well, though again I wish she'd learn to lift her foot off the pedal every now and then.

One of the more unusual discs to come along in recent years is Anatole Leikin's survey of various preludes, poems and Vers la Flamme (Centaur). Mr Leikin admits to copying Scriabin's extant performances of his own music, which the composer recorded on a Welte Mignon piano roll, and which are notable for their almost perverse rhythmical freedom and flightiness. Mr Leikin's forgery is astounding for its accurate if superficial recreation of Scriabin's pianistic approach; it impresses, too, for its imaginative speculation in the case of those works that Scriabin did not record. But in essence Mr Leikin fails, in that to engage music as if it were no more than a carbon copy of something else is to alienate any deeper experience of it. It would have been more productive to fathom its relation to his own emotional life and individual ideas.

In the virulent Fantasy in B Minor, one of the most passionate statements of Scriabin's youth, Sofronitsky's reading undulates darkly, with the troubled air of a soldier who's just been told he's going to the front, while Richter's bold, and relentlessly loud view is perhaps more optimistic (Philips). Szidon, too, brings his sexy sensibility to it, making of it something delirious that sweeps us off our feet. Horowitz's stunning survey of several of these pieces, including a particularly elegant reading of the two poems Op 69, has been reissued (Sony). In the mysterious Two Dances (Guirlandes and Flammes Sombres), Sofronitsky digs deep in readings that cajole and threaten (Philips); Fyodorova's pristine approach is compelling in spite of itself. The recorded addition to this genre, the heart of Scriabin's music, is Boris Bekhterev's magnificent survey of all of the collected poèmes. Affective intimacy is Bekhterev's middle name, and it shows in his bejeweled playing that treats every entrance of the polyphony as if it were an emulsion coming into view. If his performances of Poeme Tragique and Poeme Satanique are not nearly so heroic in scale or radically urgent as Fyodorova's, they are compelling nevertheless for their underlying quiescence and lyricism. Indeed, these qualities serve admirably Bekhterev's account of now drunken, now nostalgic glamour of the Waltz, Op 38 (Phoenix 01708).

VOCAL MUSIC

There isn't much to report in this category, because Scriabin wrote only a single song, called 'Romance'. There are few recordings, and only two worth recommending. The wonderful, ruby throated Zara Dolukhanova recorded it in the 1950s with Nina Svetlanova at the piano (Russian Disc 11342); and the extraordinary American dramatic soprano Joanna Porackova brings her sumptuous voice to its flirtatious and perhaps overheated passion, made all the more lush thanks to the exquisite playing of her pianist, Dag Achatz (Americus 20011018). Elsewhere, the erstwhile Alexander Nemtin penned a fanciful, if highly speculative 'completion' from Scriabin's youthful attenuated sketches for an opera, Keistut and Birute. Though Nemtin wisely avoided fleshing it out into a full-blown stage production, he fashioned an exotic work for soprano, baritone and orchestra that is more oratorio than opera. The supple orchestration is replete with Rimsky-Korasakovian colorations, availing itself of the quasi-Oriental compositional vocabulary fawned over by the Rimsky and his group of Russian Kuchkists. At the very least it provides a glimpse of what the melodic material might have blossomed into, had Scriabin finished it. There is no extant commercial release, but a concert performance, captured on tape, is now available at www.mp3.com/scriabin