Scriabin

Piers Lane is easily up to tackling the volatile figures that abound in Scriabin's piano music. Indeed, his technical bravura is often breathtaking … thankfully Lane never lets us forget that the virtuosic and poetic exist in equal measure.

Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed in November of that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. Many scholars have ranked it among the composer's finest scores. Some also say Shostakovich intended the work as a ''tragedy to triumph'' symphony, in the tradition of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. This release in Praga's Reminiscences series of audiophile SACD remasterings features an historic live recording from 1961 featuring Mravinsky leading the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Muti and EMI make a good case for the oft-slighted Mahlerian-scale first symphony (in six movements mark you!). As a touchstone try playing the last two movements. The allegro has a strongly oxymoronic fusion of doom and endurance in its emphasis-accented undulating theme which Muti crowns superbly in the last two minutes of the movement. He is very close to Svetlanov in this. The finale's exalted hymn to art is wonderfully carried by the choir and the soloists and Michael Myers is outstanding.

The five movement Second Symphony is gloomily introspective but Muti again propels it along. There are some Rachmaninov-like moments in the allegro and wistfulness in the andante. Much of the doom carries over from the Manfred / Francesca tribute from Tchaikovsky and ploughs inexorably forward in the earlier symphonies of Miaskovsky. The Maestoso has a straining grandeur which takes a little from Glazunov - say in the finale of the Eighth symphony.

The Third Symphony is in a more conventional three movements: Luttes, Voluptes and Jeu Divin. The same interpretative qualities apply as to the first two numbered symphonies. The Jeu movement moves a long at a smartish clip. Muti makes a good case for the work although its thematic material is rather slender. Outstanding work again from the Philadelphia brass choir.

Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, universally known as the Pathétique, is among the most deeply moving and profound of all works. An enduring masterwork which Tchaikovsky considered to be his greatest composition. Once again the struggle against ‘fate’ is central to this symphony which was to be the last Tchaikovsky wrote. The première took place in October 1893 at St. Petersburg and just eight days later the composer was dead. Few farewells in music are more poignant.

The Fourth Symphony was written at a particularly crucial point in Tchaikovsky’s life. 1877 was not only the year of his disastrous marriage but also the year in which he began his fifteen-year correspondence with his patroness Nadezhda von Meck. The F minor Symphony has always been a popular work with its muscular and melodic writing. Infused throughout the score is the sense of ‘fate’ which Tchaikovsky believed controlled his destiny as he described in a letter to Madame von Meck, “the fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from achieving its goal … which hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles.”

Composed in Russia between 1884 and 1917, the four works appearing on this disc all do so in some kind of disguise. Prokofiev and Scriabin both conceived their respective collections for the piano, and it is later arrangers that have adapted them for string orchestra. Rudolf Barshai took on Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives in 1962, selecting 15 of the 20 brief pieces and arranging them for his own ensemble, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Scriabin’s Preludes received a similar treatment in 1999 when the Finnish composer Jouni Kaipainen chose 13 from the original 24, rearranging the order they appear in and transposing them in some cases.

The idea behind the thematic programming of this disc is a journey from the earthly to the light, it is about the question of how life and death are connected.