Scriabin Mistery

“Several years ago I presented a recording of all piano works with opus numbers by Alexander Scriabin. I rehearsed, played in concerts and then recorded eight CDs, 207 works, and eight hours of music”, notes pianist Maria Lettberg. “Scriabin’s music becomes accessible via a roundabout route but then it gets under your skin and intoxicates you like a drug, makes you euphoric, addicted and…happy.” With the present recording of the early works without opus numbers, she happily completes her mammoth survey of Scriabin.

Complete sets of the Scriabin sonatas are not as unusual as they once were (e.g., Ashkenazy, Laredo, Hamelin, Szidon, Taub, Kasman). Austbo makes his contribution as well. Those who like a more docile timid approach to the sonatas will like Austbo's versions. Even in the fortissimo parts Austbo, at times, seems to play "quietly"; he plays with little volume.

Stokowski/HSO - Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstacy
Studio Master 24-Bit/96-kHz | FLAC tracks | Full Scan Covers | MU, RS | 632 MB 3% recovery
1959 | Genre: Classical | Label: Everest | SDBR-3032 | HDTrack hi-res digital download

A Bert Whyte recording of Maestro Stokowski conducting the Houston Symphony at the Houston Civic Center in 1959. Le Poeme d’extase is a big, one movement work in sonata form that combines the elements of a symphony and a tone poem. The work highlights Scriabin’s development and exploitation of new harmonic ideas including chord structures constructed on intervals of a fourth instead of a third. Coupled on this release is another Stokowski/Houston performance of Amirov’s “Azerbaijan Mugan” recorded on March 16th, 1959 at the Houston Civic Center. Amirov’s composition, masterfully performed by Stokowski and the Houston, exhibits the complicated system of mode scales and fixed melodic patterns characteristic of music of the East.