Search - Scriabin, Nikonovich :: Rare Scriabin for Piano

Fine Russian Pianist in Middling Scriabin Collection

Paul Turner | 11/01/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"You've only got to hear Scriabin's finest inspiration here - the dark, satanic Etude Op 42 No 5 - to know that Yuri Nikonovich is a Russian-trained pianist of the first rank: the controlled power of the gripping melody line is never lost even when all but the fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand are conjuring a swirl of 24 semi-quavers a bar (in each hand!) under the piano's tragic song. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to read in the CD booklet that this handsome, white-haired figure (60 when this disc was recorded in 1995) studied with Richter's great mentor Heinrich Neuhaus and was an associate of the greatest Scriabin player of them all - the composer's son-in-law Vladimir Sofronitsky. So what's the rub? Well, I have two niggling reservations about this disc - one concerning the repertoire and one the piano (the actual recording is fine). Never mind that among this supposedly "rare" Scriabin, there is quite a lot that is not so unfamiliar (the complete Op 42 Etudes, a selection of the preludes, to begin with). This chronological sample of the composer's piano music, from an early Fugue (!) to the Three Pieces, Op 49, does offer some insight into the development of the composer's unique voice - from undistinctive late-19th-century Chopinesque pieces to the strange sound world of the later pieces that prompted Stravinsky to wonder where Scriabin's music came from... but the problem is that much of this music falls a little short of Scriabin's finest piano music, and, truth to tell, the preludes, for example, do not really quite distil that strange sound world in the way that Sofronitsky himself uniquely did in some of the many LPs he recorded in Russia up to 1960 (when he died). And I mentioned the piano itself: the instrument sounds to my ear just a little less than ideally regulated, especially as the recital progresses. In the final analysis, then, this Scriabin recital may make you wish (as it did me) that Igor Nikonovich were a better known name in the West than he is, but the programme does not often lift you into Scriabin's unique world in the way that, for example, Roger Woodward's ABC disc of late Scriabin so mesmerisingly does (with fabulous accounts of, among other pieces, the Tenth Sonata and Vers la flamme), nor, as I say, does it conjour the magic of Sofronitsky in the preludes to make up for the slightly less than first-rate recording. In sum, it's a disc I'm glad I have heard, so that I know Nikonovich's name and because it was interesting to hear some early and little-known Scriabin - but I'm not sure it's a disc I'd want to return to very often, and certainly not to listen to uninterruptedly or for pure musical escapism."