Search - Alexander Scriabin :: Alexander Scriabin: The Composer as Pianist

Extraordinary Document

Music Fan | 08/28/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Scriabin did not live long enough to record his music on either acoustically or electrically inscribed disks. This excellent CD presents the next best thing. The first nine tracks on this disk present realizations of piano-roll recordings of Alexander Scriabin playing his own music, circa 1910 if I am not mistaken. If you love Scriabin, or even if you don't much care for the composer but love artistic and individual pianism, you must buy this CD.



I have always shied away from piano-roll recordings, under the belief that they were clumsy and lifeless imitations of 'real' recordings. In fact, there were many different piano-roll recording systems and the quality of the realization depends a great deal on the skill of the technician replaying the roll. In this case, the technician clearly knows what he is about. The playing and recording are hauntingly life-like and charismatic. Scriabin plays his own music with the kind of improvisational verve only acceptable from the composer himself. His handling of dynamics, voicing, rhythm and color is quite simply unique. I would be tempted to say that his readings of each piece is definitive, except that he probably would have interpreted them rather differently on another day or in another mood. It is a shame that all he has left us are performances of miniatures from his early and middle period.



The remaining tracks on this disk contain realizations of other excellent pianists' piano rolls of Scriabin's music. These recordings are also of very high quality, but they cannot hold a candle to Scriabin's own.



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