Scriabin Piano Preludes
Posted by: herm on 13 March 2003
For many years I have had a crush on Alexander Scriabin's Preludes for Piano, especially the Opus 11 set that was published between 1888 and 1896. In later life Scriabin (1872 - 1915) got more and more progressive, wishing to compose music for piano, orchestra and light machine, changing the colors along with the moods of the music. But these early preludes are very much in competition with the Chopin Preludes. They are more advanced in terms of harmony and the number of fingers you would ideally need to be able to play this music half way decently, but still there are pieces that Chopin or Schumann would have loved to play and they would say, 'why didn't I think of that!'
I love that. I love originality, too. But being able to breathe new and authentic life into the Chopin melos, that's genius, too. Let's face it. there's not enough Chopin to go around.
I got hooked on these pieces a long time ago, and have been looking for good recordings ever since. But it seemed they just didn't exist, apart from little bits by Vladimir Horowitz or, earlier, Sofronitskzy (who happened to be Scriabin's son-in-law). There used to be a complete recording by Marta Deyanova of Scriabin's Opus 11 coupled with Shostakovich's Opus 35 - another set of 24 Preludes. But the coupling doesn;t make a whole lot of sense, and the recording / performance is dismal.
Michael Pletnev, a great pianist and conductor, recorded the Opus 11 for Virgin, together with the Sonatas 4 and 10 (famous in Horowitz's radiant Carnegie performance). Some pieces are nice, but the performance is strangely listless, while Scriabin's music essentially is about ecstacy.
Recently I bought the hip Lucille Chung recording, on the Italian Dynamic label. Chung looks pretty neato on the picture, and her playing is completely accurate, but there's no interpretative lift-off. I should have known, looking at the artist picture; but she's recorded an entire Ligeti cd, too, so one hopes...
So finally I caved and got the double cd from Hyperion by Piers Lane, of the Complete Preludes. I still feel there's more to this music than this, but surely I haven't heard any better than this (except in single pieces).
Is anyone else ever listening to this gorgeous music?
Herman
I love that. I love originality, too. But being able to breathe new and authentic life into the Chopin melos, that's genius, too. Let's face it. there's not enough Chopin to go around.
I got hooked on these pieces a long time ago, and have been looking for good recordings ever since. But it seemed they just didn't exist, apart from little bits by Vladimir Horowitz or, earlier, Sofronitskzy (who happened to be Scriabin's son-in-law). There used to be a complete recording by Marta Deyanova of Scriabin's Opus 11 coupled with Shostakovich's Opus 35 - another set of 24 Preludes. But the coupling doesn;t make a whole lot of sense, and the recording / performance is dismal.
Michael Pletnev, a great pianist and conductor, recorded the Opus 11 for Virgin, together with the Sonatas 4 and 10 (famous in Horowitz's radiant Carnegie performance). Some pieces are nice, but the performance is strangely listless, while Scriabin's music essentially is about ecstacy.
Recently I bought the hip Lucille Chung recording, on the Italian Dynamic label. Chung looks pretty neato on the picture, and her playing is completely accurate, but there's no interpretative lift-off. I should have known, looking at the artist picture; but she's recorded an entire Ligeti cd, too, so one hopes...
So finally I caved and got the double cd from Hyperion by Piers Lane, of the Complete Preludes. I still feel there's more to this music than this, but surely I haven't heard any better than this (except in single pieces).
Is anyone else ever listening to this gorgeous music?
Herman