It's with some reverence I put this video together, for these count among the piano's most 'legendary' studio recordings. Very little is known about them. Their first release wasn't until 20 years after Sofronitsky's passing, with Melodiya's (abandoned) effort to publish his complete recordings in a multi-volume series of LPs. The sound and the playing is homogenous enough that it's easy at hand to assume they were recorded over a single day, but Melodiya does separate them into four sessions, held between September and April 1958/59. What I do know is that the result is 58 minutes of purest poetry, played by the piano's greatest master of that art.
As with all poets Sofronitsky's playing doesn't lend itself to analysis, but it's interesting, at least, to note how he treats his instrument. The playing is never deliberately coloured or orchestral in an imitative sense, but within the bounds of the piano it is layered and multi-dimensional, plastic and wide-ranging. The fragrant and diffuse, the vocal and expressive, the sharp and pointed all finds its place in his diction, which he lets speak freely and openly, often using a full dynamic range even in pieces you otherwise think of as intimate. At the very heart of his playing however is that from the first note to the last it is the product of pure imagination - teeming with expressive willpower. The thought of Ton & Takt never seems to enter his mind. Nor a musical delivery of the text as it looks on paper, as was the vogue in western Europe. Sofronitsky rather recalls the ideals of the 1800s, where fantasy, expression, philosophy, and poetry reigned supreme; packaged in a way where the Dionysian plays no small part. Often even to the degree that it takes charge and dominates the Apollonian side of his poetry, an unholy juxtaposition unique to Sofronitsky.
The greatest value of the recordings for me lies in the range of content Sofronitsky finds in the music, and in, I feel, how innately he understands it. From the delicately expressive, finely recited poem that is the opening Prelude, through the scenes in Scriabin's mystic legendarium of the f-sharp Sonata, to the black magic and unfiltered inner workings of the mind in the late works, where Scriabin lays bare perception in much the same sense painters of the day did with the visual world. Throughout it is music of symbolism, of poetry, and of the metaphysical, and Sviatoslav Richter was right when he said that Sofronitsky was as if made for the works. One part I have to highlight among the many which deserve it is the Andante from the 3rd Sonata, which may have the most beautiful vocal playing I've heard at a piano. We often speak of tone, as we should, but Sofronitsky's playing here rather invites a discussion about aesthetics. It's of such expressive grace, with a liquid quality to the melody, which reaches, floats, and dissolves into the filigree as he plays. It's one of those rare moments in music where by the sheer force of imagination of the performer, the instrument begins to transcend its nature. Of still greater beauty may be the theme's final iteration, when it is turned into a song he lets sail like a shooting star above the accompaniment. The striking image aside, Sofronitsky's sensibility is amazing here. Note how he sets it up already with the accents from 13.29, introducing the voice first as if in mere comment to the previous discourse, before preparing to speak. These are conversational abstractions set in the highest regions of art, and yet they follow the same rules of engagement you and I would use at a dinner table. The greater glory goes to the genius of Alexander Scriabin, but from Sofronitsky's side too these are results which could only have come from a born poet and an uncommonly intelligent artist.
A final thing to cherish is that Sofronitsky was given as favourable studio conditions as he was to make the recordings, and a piano which is almost in tune. How many times weren't he treated to less!
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872-1915)
00:00 - Prelude in B-flat minor, Op.37 No.1
02:01 - Sonata No.3 in F-sharp minor, Op.23 - I. Drammatico
07:57 - Sonata No.3 in F-sharp minor, Op.23 - II. Allegretto
10:19 - Sonata No.3 in F-sharp minor, Op.23 - III. Andante
14:25 - Sonata No.3 in F-sharp minor, Op.23 - IV. Presto con fuoco
20:29 - Poems, Op.32 - No.1 in F-sharp major
23:55 - Poems, Op.32 - No.2 in D major
25:36 - Fantasy in B minor, Op.28
35:05 - Prelude in B-flat minor, Op.11 No.16
36:52 - Prelude in B-flat major, Op.35 No.2
39:21 - Sonata No.9, Op.68 (Black Mass)
47:55 - Dances, Op.73 - 1. Guirlandes
50:51 - Dances, Op.73 - 2. Flammes sombres
52:59 - Vers la flamme, Op.72
Vladimir Sofronitsky, piano
Source: Moscow Radio Studio Recordings
Recs:
1958-09-12 (Sonatas)
1958-10-31 (Preludes, Poems)
1959-01-06 (Dances, Vers la flamme)
1959-04-29 (Fantasy)
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16 июл 2024
