<<  -- 2 --  John Bell Young    A POETIC APPROACH

In Eric Le Van, one of the most masterful interpreters of Scriabin to come along in decades, both the mazurka as well as the composer has an ideal protagonist [listen -- track 12, 0:00-1:18]. Indeed, Mr Le Van, whose earlier recordings of Brahms sonatas were also impressive, is a Scriabinist to the manner born. His playing is always elegant, meticulously adjudicated, and discreetly inflected. Yet expressive intensity is neither compromised nor bogged down by Mr Le Van's interpretive specificity. The sheer wealth of detail in these readings would be enough all by itself to recommend this disc, but Mr Le Van goes even further, looking behind the notes to disclose the individual character of each work.

Mr Le Van is not an artist to make a meal of any expressive gesture. On the contrary, he sees no need to indulge for mere effect the gentle melancholy and troubled wanderlust of these works. Instead, his approach is poetic. He gives pause to the underlying suggestiveness of Scriabin's fragmented, elusive rhythms and metrical cross-currents, which distinguish these mazurkas from the more straightforward vocabulary of Chopin. Scriabin's mazurkas, unlike Chopin's, rely less on the idiosyncrasies of any specific dance form, as much as they codify the evocation of a mood with whimsical dispatch.

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