Repertoire: The Essential Scriabin 

As Richter said, talking about Sofronitsky as ideal interpreter of Scriabin: “Scriabin isn't the sort of composer whom you'd regard as your daily bread, but is a heady liqueur on which you can get drunk periodically, a poetical drug, a crystal that's easily broken.”

Made my day: „Messiaen without the birds“....

For me the greatest of all Scriabin pianists will always be Sofronitsky. He defies gravity, the color and imagination of his interpretations are a beacon to all others. And even though the highest level of virtuosity is required to get this music off the ground in Sofronitsky’s playing it is secondary to the music. A very close second is Joseph Villa. Feverish, fantastic, virtuosity to burn - really marvelous.

Thanks for this talk! You inspired me to write a concerto for kazoo and orchestra. In five movements, duration 60 minutes.

You briefly mentioned 'Mysterium', Scriabins unfinished megalomaniac piece, intended to be performed in the Himalayas, with no spectators, only participants. Composer Alexander Nemtin spent 28 years, making a performing version of the sketch. I have the Kondrashin version for Part 1 - Universe. Well worth hearing for Scriabin fans. There is an Ashkenazy version of the whole thing on 3 CDs, which I have not yet heard, I think it is available only in the big complete box.

Alexander Scriabin (who is a vastly underrated composer by the way) is interesting in that most of everything in his oeuvre (with the exception of his early pieces which betray an influence of chopin) are masterpieces, a true descendant of post wagnerian harmonies - Its astonishing to think what he would've accomplished had he lived longer..

In addition to the symphony set by Ashkenazy, he also recorded the performance version of Mysterium, or rather called 'Preparation for the Final Mystery', a 3CD set full of wonderful weirdness. When experienced live like I did a couple of years ago here in Brussels (Brussels being a bit of a Scriabin place, he lived there in 1908), monster orchestra complete with light organ and fog machine, it is quite hypnotic.

By the way, congratulations on your first year! Absolutely my favorite “go to” on RU-vid!

Thanks. Scriabin is one of those composers where I’m quite happy having one good realisation of each work, some of which, no surprise, are ones you highlight here. I’m in two minds about the later orchestral stuff, some of it is so “drifty” that I almost always drift away myself and lose concentration. I know that the experiment of Nemtin to do a performing hypothesis of parts of the Mysterium music isn’t really “by” Scriabin, but Ashkenazy clearly believed in it! Man, I get hypnotised by it for a time, but no surprise I’ve never gotten all the way through.....

Thank you for the Theosophy story. Scriabin's stylistic change from late Romanticism to Modernism and his fascination with Theosophy sound very much in parallel with W. B. Yeats.

yay, Muti & Philly ! so happy their Scriabin cycle made the scathing scrutiny of the Hurwitz cut !

Thank you for this awesome video! I don’t know his music so well, you are right he really kind of gets swept under the rug. It occurred to me that I have never listened to Prometheus so I just did with that awesome Muti/Philly cycle! Wow - some piece. Not only does it recall “Messiaen without the birds”, but I’m reminded of Florent Schmitt (Symphonie Concertante and his orchestration of the first movement of “Ombres” [there’s a newish record with Vincent Lardaret playing both Ravel concerts as well]) and Szymanowski’s 4th symphony (Symphonia Concertante). I would LOVE to see your videos on these two composers! I know you mentioned Rattle’s cycle in your review of his time in Birmingham - maybe there’s more on your channel that I haven’t found yet. I love these interesting transitional composers and find the way they handled the changing times way more fascinating than things like Beethoven 7 and Brahms 1 which are already etched in my brain! 😂 thanks again! Aaron in Miami

Dear David, Thank you very much for fulfilling my wish! I really enjoyed the video. Warm wishes from Switzerland,

Thank you very much. Lettberg ordered!

Poem of Ecstasy. First performance I remember was the Monteux/BSO recording. Will have to dig it out and relisten.

Maazel’s Poeme de l’extase with the Cleveland orchestra the most gripping for me personally. It’s been my favorite for years and I haven’t found one that clicks better with me. The fact that Scriabin only lived to 43 I see as one of our greatest losses.

Glad youve covered Scriabin Dave. I LOVE his harmonies and building climaxes.Sonatas are superb. Believe he caught Sepsis from cutting his lip whilst shaving? Talk about bad luck! I was taken back by Muti's recording of the 1st Symphony years ago.

The great Abbado/BSO Scriabin is also available on the DG "Originals" series, coupled with Debussy Nocturnes, adn Rave Daphnis Suite No. 2 and the Pavane. Great disc! The early 70's were Golden age of the BSO.... Must try the Maazel... thanks!

The Trumpet/Kazoo solo was a total scream! So funny...and apt! Btw, one of my favorite things about Scriabin came in a Horowitz interview where he describes meeting Scriabin when Horowitz was very young. Horowitz says Scriabin was sitting there with the weirdest crazy look on his face, and Horowitz imitates the psychotic look he had seen then. Then Horowitz says "you know , he was crazy!" And you are so right, Golovanov is oddly excellent!

Love the extract from Sonata 5 and rue how little I listened to my Ashkenazy and Austbo recordings of the Sonatas.

They should do a Complete Scriabin Boxed Set next year, a 150th Anniversary edition! And hopefully they'll do it right this time.

So glad you mentioned Golavonov. Music this wacky deserves a very wacky maestro - which is perhaps why Stokowski was a great Scriabin maestro. I recently listened to the Kitajenko Extase featuring a chorus - oy vey. It might have been passable if slow without the purposeless singing.

I love how the siren started blaring when you mentioned Gergiev 🤣 13:17

Already from 13:00 on, somehow I had the ominous feeling you were going to say Gergiev, and, yes indeed, when you mentioned him, I started to laugh: his Poem of Ecstasy is one of (I think) two recordings I have and listen to the most. I think what "attracts" me to this recording/performance is its sense of raggedness and crudeness emphasizing the falling apart of any normal perception of reality (who can say that being ecstatic is not the same as being crazy?). And the trumpet playing is almost as bad as the one in Bernstein's Mahler 5 with the New York Philharmonic :-) I guess I love this recording like I would love a dysfunctional friend. But quite likely all of the above is just a case of cognitive dissonance. Thank you for recommending the other recordings.

People who believe in “secret societies and strange conspiracy theories ……….. idea of shadowy beings running around controlling everything” …….hmmmmm ……… Sounds eerily familiar. The modern composer who most resembles Scriabin, to my ears, is Rautavaara, whose opera 'Rasputin' aims to evoke the world of Scriabin's infamous contemporary and the twilight of the Tsarist regime you describe.

From my wife's family, I managed to get hold of a program book for a concert on the fifth anniversary of Scriabin's death by the philharmonic in (at the time) Petrograd. There are perceptive notes by the composer/musicologist Boris Asafyev. These help show that Scriabin, for all his off-putting eccentricities, was very representative of the "Silver Age" in Russian culture, and deeply admired by people such as Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelshtam. I was long disappointed by my inability to hear anything in Scriabin that seemed distinctly "Russian" (unlike with Stravinsky's "Russian" period, or in Mussorgsky). It was only on visits to St Petersburg and hearing Orthodox church bells from across the street that I detected something foundational that can be heard in great Russian piano works--by Rachmaninov most obviously, but also by Prokofiev and Scriabin (especially in the 7th Sonata). With the cultural change in a lot of countries right after WWI, things that were cutting edge around 1905-1915 suddenly seemed very dated, and that happened with Scriabin, years before the 1920s Soviet avant-garde degenerated into compulsory "Socialist Realism." Oddly enough, Scriabin became "modern" again about 40-50 years later, as a soundtrack for Soviet exploits in the cosmos. What's downright uncanny is how that unearthly quality--especially in Prometheus and the late sonatas--is signaled by Asafyev's program notes from 1920. Though I like performances of the last symphonies by Muti and Maazel, my preference for piano works is mostly with Russians--from Sofronitsky and Richter to more recent performers, such as Volodin, Sudbin, Trifonov. One other thing to check out: riffs on one of the Op. 11 preludes and Opus 32 Poeme by Chick Corea.

I don't think Scriabin was crazy at all - but he was a very shrewd marketeer, who knew that to gain "street cred" as an artist in those days, a reputation as a mystical genius could be very helpful. While he dabbled in all sorts of weird mystical movements, he never truly committed to any of them. And none of that appears to have slowed his enjoyment of the better things in life: good food, good wine, and Tatiana de Schloezer in particular.

I used to know someone, a Russian, long dead, who saw Scriabin play. He thought most pianists, Sviatoslav Richter included, didn't "get" Scriabin. The one exception, in his view, was Horowitz. A pianist himself, he demonstrated how Scriabin played the Prelude Op11 no10, as he remembered it. His use of rubato made most pianists, including Horowitz, sound pretty staight-laced. It was quite an extraordinary experience.

I really like Scriabin. Lettberg and Alexeev have recorded the complete piano works. I very much enjoy both of these complete sets.

The Gergiev “Poem of Ecstasy” sounds horrible! - can’t wait to get it and hear it! Lol...

The solo trumpet scared my dog and pissed off the bird!

Svetlanov and USSR State rocks! I dont know guys if you know his Shchedrin. Pure gold. Btw, I just listened new Messiean Quartet with "Left Coast Chamber Ensemble" and I don't think i heard worse then that. That make me think, maybe we should talk about this masterpiece and the best and worst recordings? Regards Irek

Ah yes, Scriabin, the composer we turn to occasionally when we need some delightful decadence in our lives. One of the most original minds in music history! You mentioning Svetlanov in this talk made me think of a composer Scriabin had a deciding influence on, and who was championed by Svetlanov: Nikolaj Mjaskovski. When you listen to Mijaskovski's early symphonies, you notice how heavily he was influenced by Scriabin, at a time when the older composer was still alive. Mjaskovski's 3rd sounds strikingly like Scriabin, but without the obsessive repetitions and the over the top climaxes. I hope you'll do a talk on Mjaskovski at some time, he's such an underrated and fascinating composer. And it's such a darn shame that there are dozens of recordings of every Shostakovich symphony, even the crappy ones 2, 3 and 12 (since every conductor out there wants to do a full Shostakovich cycle), while half of Mjaskovski's 27 symphonies only have a single recording: Svetlanov's, in his complete cycle, the only one in existance. And those performances are occasionally so wild and wooly that you wonder how those symphonies would sound when recorded with a proper budget and with more rehearsals. Curiously enough, there are quite a lot of recordings of the 6th, his longest symphony (but in my opinion not his best): Kondrashin, Järvi, Liss and others. One wishes Liss would be given the chance to record a complete cycle, he did a terrific 10th too.

Happy anniversary David. Great Scriabin talk. Might I suggest a video devoted to Furtwangler? You can sheppsrd us through the dross and lead us to his best performances.

Yes! The long-awaited DH talk about Scriabin! As you said, he truly was an edge-case as far as composers go, and in true Hurwitz fashion, I have a little anecdote to back it up: My dad has never been a fan of classical music, and I really mean ALL classical music. From Monteverdi to Iannis Xenakis, I've tried and tried to find something that he enjoys, but to no availd. In his opinion, everything written before Ravel is "pathetically pompous", and everything after Ravel sounds like plink plonk. However! Just a few weeks ago, we were driving home after a day out climbing, and I decide to try my luck with we Scriabin in the car, not expecting a very positive response from Verse la Flamme, but, to my suprise, he asked if I can play some more, and some more, and against all odds, he becomes somewhat of a Scriabin fan. Guess that's just the effect of Theosophy working....

This talk inspired me to pull out Boulez/New York Philharmonic, The Poem of Ecstasy, for a listen. I really enjoyed it and I am not a big fan of romantic orchestral stuff. Then, Glenn Gould, Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp minor. More wonderful stuff! If you want to hear Gould play something between Beethoven and Wagner, here's your chnce. More Scriabin for me, I'm afraid.

4:12 "He sounds like Chopin on crack." 😂

The one quote about Scriabin, I will never forget: "No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death." (-his biographer)

I have become a fan of Vladimir Sofronitsky's performances of Scriabin. I only recently became aware of his work reading about what other Russian pianists thought of him. Not well known in the West. Years ago I first heard the works performed by Ruth Laredo = there are OK.

Wonderful video as usual. We are grateful. Are you considering some Alkan talk?

Thanks for the Scriabin update, David!! However, the essential Scriabin would not be complete without a fleeting mention of Igor Zhukov, Michael Ponti and Ruth Laredo.....

Lettberg's Scriabin is breathtakingly beautiful, but only scratching surface of the music. I would recommend Sofronitsky or Richter's set in Profil Box set or Alexeev s complete set. Richter's DG recording of 5th sonata is amazing. Nikolai Demidenko made a stunning recording of Scriabin's piano concerto which has never been surpassed to this day in my opinion.

Scriabin's genius was evident from the beginning and his early works are notable not due to their Chopinian ancestry but in part because they depart from it so distinctively. Everyone keeps repeating the simplistic "Early Scriabin is like Chopin" because both wrote Mazurkas, Preludes, etc. but rhetorically, harmonically, melodically, contrapuntally, and even technically it's inaccurate and dismissive and undermines the individual achievements of both. It's not you, Dave -- it's everyone. Sorry, just a pet peeve. /rant Two thumbs up on the Muti, my favorite.

Despite the prevailing consensus that Muti is tops in the symphonies, as well as your highly seductive description of them, I've always found the sound on my copy to be somewhat hazy and lacking in color. Makes me wonder if I have a bad pressing if such a phenomenon exists??? I don't go to Inbal for most of the symphonies, but his interpretation of the 3rd mvt. of symphony 1 is desert island for me, though Fedoseyev and Golovanov are great as well. As for the sonatas, Hamelin may be fast and smooth, but he lacks the inflection of Ashkenazy which brings out the visceral emotional component in the tension and release of the writing. I passed on Gergiev's most recent Scriabin recordings after listening to samples. Especially disappointing was the interpretation of the 2nd mvt of the 3rd symphony, of which his earlier recording of it with the Leningrad Philharmonic is my favorite. I had been hoping that his familiarity with the piece would result in an interpretation at least as good, but it has none of the personality and detail of his previous recording.

I've always thought Scribian's piano music was under-appreciated by most 'serious' pianists. Garrick Ohlsson went on a big campaign to change that 'state of affairs' a few years ago. I'm sure the truth is that most of them just couldn't play it, and they didn't want to put in the work necessary to learn it. "Promotheus" is a piece I really like. Not only is it a great piano and orchestra work, it also has plenty of tam-tam, here and there.

Are Piers Lane’s recordings of Scriabin on Hyperion any good?

There's another symphony cycle by Segerstam on Bis, but I don't know how it compares to Muti or Ashkenazy.

Ironically enough, Gergiev was the only one live performance I had luck to visit. Maybe that's the reason I didn't like Poème de l'extase. Except the last three minutes, they were still wonderful and... loud. Fantactic experience. But 17 minutes before that- Ugh. I think that the trumpet I heard was the same as on the disc, Timur Martynov, Gergiev's beloved trumpet player but I might be wrong.

You should do a video on the complete works of Rachmaninoff!

I like Lettberg's playing and admire her scholarship and repertory etc. However do you like the recorded sound on this collection? It's got a bit of a strange wobble in places for me. I thought maybe it was just my rip of the cd. so I grabbed the opus 2 off her youtube feed and, alas, there it is again. Say for instance first 30 seconds of the famous op. 2, no. 1 etude.

Scriabin is the only composer that comes to mind that is more difficult to play on piano than Rachmoninoff (and the music still sounding musical). I am a big fan of his works

I had a friend who used to swear by Sofronitsky’s Scriabin. He said, “No one gets Scriabin like Sofronitsky”. What say you about this? Thanks.

Horowitz always dropped some Sciabian into his concerts. I never quite warmed up to it. Time to try again I suppose. Leads to an episode idea. How about "composers or peices loved more by performers than listeners"? Lord know we already have "composers or peices loved more by listeners than prefromers".

I think Richter's interpretation of Scriabin's 5th is way more passionate and enjoyable and overall better than Lettberg's.

Rafael Kubelik's wife was a member of the Theosophical Society and yet he never made a single Scriabin recording. Perhaps he'd just grown sick and tired of Blavatskyan balderdash.

I realise you might be returning to Scriabin's piano works, but not mentioning Sofronitsky is a sin worthy of being excommunicated from and by the Church of Theosophy.

The “essential” Scriabin should be more like a three minute video!

Marc André Hamelin is , maybe, the greatest pianist of our time. I plays like he has 4 hands,

In the shameless self-promotion category, this pee-on violist would like to boast that the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra has over the years, since 2011, played the 2nd and 3rd Skryabin symphonies, and twice the Poeme d'extase (with the latter of the two performances of the Poeme generally better than the first). A reasonable output from an unlikely source, eh-?!!?