Search - Alexander Scriabin, John Ogdon :: Scriabin: Piano Music

Scriabin' s art playing!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 05/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The skein of entwined myths around the personality of Scriabin make us to presume hewaqs not precisely an easy to follow composer and obviously tolisten him.



He was in fact, owner of a difficult and irascible character, his hate toward Beethoven' s music joined with his eccentricities at the moment to compose are factors worthy to take into account at the moment to emit any previous pronouncement around his temperament.



That lack of center made of him a ceaseless investigator and true herald of new sounds. His music reveals a continuous state of tension and febrile anxiety, that permeate almost his entire work.



In this sense he personifies one of the main features of the contemporary man: that existential anguish and perpetual search of new horizons and moods, an absolute lack of pertinence respect to a fixed doctrine or movement.



The main characteristic of his music resides precisely in that visible ambiguity, loaded of romanticism made smithereens, in which you never realize the presence of an atom of religiosity, so common in the most Russian composers. That blend of mysticism, pantheism, nervous contemplation and sensuality is a common denominator when you analyze his complete works. So, at the moment you decide to listen this composer, you should gather all these factors due the fact you could obtain a deception, or disappointment.



Along the history, few pianists have been able capable to get into this kaleidoscopic universe, signed by a deep homesickness and enigmatic lyricism, enrooted till the core of his fertile and variegated imagination.



John Ogdon is precisely one of these notable pianists who understood and could express with distinguished refinement and sensual panache, the minimum facets of this composer.

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Serviceable Skryabin...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 12/29/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

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The late English pianist John Ogdon was known for his formidable keyboard skill.

He won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962 (jointly with Ashkenazy).



Ogdon was a specialist of the dark-side of late-Romantic pianism (e.g., Alkan, Busoni, Rachmaninov, etc.), and here his 1971 traversal of Skryabin's Sonatas is quite excellent.



Ogdon's Skryabin on first audition seems somewhat sharp-edged and clinical (like the stainless steel scalpels in a neurosurgeon's theater); yet repeated hearings reveal a certain ineffable blood-warmth.



Compare realizations of Sonata No. 5:



Gould: [13'10"]

Szidon: [12'59"]

Hamelin: [12'46"]

Laredo: [10'39"]

Ogdon: [12'15"]

Glemser: [11'40"]

Jablonski: [13'07"]



Or Sonata No. 8:



von Eckardstein: [14'13"]

Szidon: [14'28"]

Hamelin: [12'09"]

Laredo: [14'42"]

Ogdon: [11'35"]

Rudy: [14'49"]

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Scriabin: Complete Piano Sonatas

Glenn Gould Edition: Chopin / Mendelssohn / Scriabin / Prokofiev

Scriabin: Sonata No. 3: Prokofiev: Sonata No. 7

Scriabin: The Complete Piano Sonatas

Alexander Skriabin: Mazurkas

The Early Scriabin

Scriabin: Les Dernieres Coeuvres (Les Ceuvres Ultimes)

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Scriabin, a Biography: Second, Revised Edition

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(At this low price, Ogdon is hard to beat.)

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