Scriabin: the symphonies.

[sdtom]

I just got a recording from Pentatone of Scriabin's 1st and his Poem of Ecstasy with Plentnev conducting the Russian National Orchestra. Nice sound. Someone I've never heard in a live concert.
Tom

[adriano]

Ilja, this is a well-known thing since ages! But I would rather say an evolving work in progress since Symphony No.3.
And what Mark Thomas says, simply makes me shudder.
There are a lot of excellent recordings of his orchestral works (Golovanov, Kitajenko, Svetalnov etc.) which just prove the contrary. Not to speak about Michael Ponti's incredible approach and exciting renderings of his (complete) piano works. Listen also to the Sonatas played by Roberto Szidon and you will find out that there is much more behind that!

[Alan Howe]

I agree, Adriano, but even I find Prometheus hard to take - as well as the late piano sonatas.

[eschiss1]

The latter sound remarkably (probably much too) clear to me in Ashkenazy's recording on Decca- but to each, etc.

[Mark Thomas]

Sorry I made you shudder, Adriano! I couldn't imagine what it was that I'd written, but I see it was almost six years ago. All the same, Scriabin remains a complete blind spot for me. My loss, I am absolutely sure.

[Alan Howe]

Are you still sure you don't like the lovely PC, positioned stylistically somewhere between Chopin and Rachmaninov?

[adriano]

Try also to listen to Scriabin's last work, in the completed form by Alexander Nemtin, whom I met in Moscow one year before he died. DeccaA/Ashkenazy "The Final Mystery". Thanks to Nemtin I was able to understand much about Scriabin's futuristic ideas and possible style to come. Nemtin was a wonderful person - a composer himself - and at that time in financial needs. He had lost his money because he had trusted in those ruinous Russian State Bank funds who went bancrupt. When we met, he did not even have the money to pay the taxi fare from his home to my Hotel, and when I invited him and his wife (the musicologist Julia Makarova) for dinner, their eyes shined of gratitude. I actually intended to record this work, but Marco Polo found that the 4000 Dollars I wanted Nemtin to receive, were too much. I would have copied the score and extracted the parts. But it seems that Ashkenazy already counted with this project before I did. This listening needs some patience, but it's worth it.
The 1st part of this work had been already recorded on Melodiya by Kirill Kondrashin in 1973 ("Universe").
The mentioned (excellently conducted) Decca CD is very interesting, since it also contains Nemtin's orchestrations of 14 piano pieces by Scriabin, grouped unter the title "Nuances".
Actually, right these days I am editing a video documentary on my many Moscow stays, in which my enounter with Nemtin is mentioned.

[Alan Howe]

I can't take this unfinished Scriabin at all seriously; as music it tries one's patience; as a philosophical concept it smacks of megalomania. Sorry...

[adriano]

So you dont'like Wagner as well, Alan, which is an earlier megalomaniac :-)

[Mark Thomas]

It's simply ages since I heard Scriabin's Piano Concerto, Alan. I'll give it another listen, since you suggest it so appealingly! 

[Alan Howe]

Well, at least Wagner knows when to stop...  
As I said, the Scriabin simply tries one's patience - all those unresolved climaxes.

[adriano]

The climax of "Poem of Ecstasy" resolves into very simple C major. Of course it is, compared to his Symphony, a short thing. But I agree in loving his wonderfully Romantic Piano Concerto!

[Alan Howe]

The climax of "Poem of Ecstasy" resolves into very simple C major]The climax of "Poem of Ecstasy" resolves into very simple C major

Eventually. Anyway, it's the The Final Mystery that really tries one's patience...

[eschiss1]

... I'm not sure how much of a completed-by-other-hands can be blamed on the composer who didn't finish it, but I speak without in-depth knowledge there. (Is Nemtin as detailed about what he did in his reconstruction as Payne has been - which is to say, extremely, especially iirc in the notes to the full score - in writing about the Elgar 3, for example?... Or is it more like Lobanova's reconstruction of Roslavets' 6th violin sonata, where a paragraph "suffices" to explain the whole "this wasn't even described as a sonata by the composer but..."? (and nothing, iirc, about how much editorial invention was involved besides that, though I'll double-check that statement...))

[sdtom]

I enjoy his Poem of Ecstasy. He had his own ideas with the use of the color wheel etc. Sorry he died so young as it would have been interesting to see how he evolved.