ALEXANDER SCRIABIN  (1872 – 1915) new CD, played by OLLI MUSTONEN, piano

Review by Fabio Bardelli

12 Etudes, Op. 8
6 Preludes, Op. 13
5 Preludes, Op. 16
Piano Sonata No
. 10, Op. 70
Vers la flamme (Poème), Op. 72

CD ONDINE
Catalogue No. ODE 1184-2

FIRENCE: I would like to review this beautiful monographic CD with music by Alexander Scriabin, starting from the last track, maybe the best known among the ones included in this record: the poème Vers la flamme, a mixed blessing for pianists and above all of listeners. 
Alexander Scriabin was a one of a kind musician: he was a pianist, a composer, and was always surrounded by a “sulphur halo” because of his being also a mystic philosopher and thinker, and his taking part to theosophic subjects.
As a composer, he started from a post-romantic language, then he approached in a very personal way the 1900s sperimentalism. The thinker and the composer were obviously tied, so we can find reflections of his philosophic theories also in his musical production.
Reams have been written over Vers la flamme, a page so short and so intense, and this work has inspired the most different interpretations. One of its most important interpreters, Wladimir Horowitz, considered the page as the description of the end of the Earth, with fire tongues destroying the world. Others thought to it as the prediction of First World War destruptions (this page was written in 1914), or of the nuclear fission, not to forget those who saw in this page the continuing of Scriabin philosophic-theosofic theories with the final victory of God, or the Absolute.
Anyhow this music has a great impact on the listener, with an emotional crescendo (even technical, for the poor pianist) that finds in Olli Mustonen an original performer. He seems almost to make tabula rasa of the many previous executions, and start from the beginning, that is from Scriabin’s notes
.
It looks like a simple idea, but at the contrary it’s a very personal approach. Mustonen’s clear and shining tocco (thanks also the piano that has been chosen for the recording) seems overwhelm Scriabin’s score, but the approach of the Finnish pianist is to put Scriabin’s pianism as the last descendant of Middle European Romantism, putting there its roots, with clear echoes of Brahms or Schumann.
We find the same spirit of rediscovery and of “finding a new starting point” in the other tracks of this CD, very coherent under this point of view: actually, Sonata nr 10 (the last among all Scriabin’s piano Sonatas, while Vers la flamme has been considered as the 11th by some criticians) is on the same interpretative line, and Studi e Preludi are performed in a personal way, bright and coloured, very different from the dark and percussive one (even if in certain way interesting) as other pianists do.

In conclusion, this is a very intelligent and personal CD by one of the most interesting pianist nowadays. The sound quality is excellent, as is the booklet of this Ondine CD.

Fabio Bardelli
translation from italian Bruno Tredicine