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Rating: What a meeting!
I see this double CD by Decca on sale for 13.90, I hesitate for a minute, but in the end, I decide to take it. It turned out to be one of the happiest choices I could make! Even better than calling in sick to work and leaving for Cuba. Better even than calling Francy "mille buchi"...
I was already familiar with Alexander Scriabin for his marvelous orchestral works, including the grandiose First Symphony, the Third ("The Divine Poem"), the Fourth ("The Poem of Ecstasy"), and the Fifth ("Prometheus, The Poem of Fire"), all masterpieces.
A little-known and atypical composer, but first and foremost a fanatic prophet of an individualistic religious mysticism, he lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in that Russia full of fervor and avant-garde that also produced Stravinsky. Scriabin considered himself a semi-divine being, predestined to bring a sort of enlightenment to humanity (a Prometheus, indeed), as can be gleaned from some of his delirious excerpts:
"There must be a fusion of all the Arts, but not theatrical like Wagner's. Art must unite with philosophy and religion in an indivisible unity to form a new gospel that will replace the old one we have survived. I hope to create such a "mystery". For this, it would be necessary to build some kind of temple...but humanity is not ready for all this. Humanity needs sermons. It must be led towards new paths. And I preach. Once I even preached from a boat like Christ. I have a small circle of people who understand me perfectly and follow me..."
Scriabin's music, like his life, was the emblem of excess and longing for infinity. In his scores, conventional indications like "Allegro" or "Lento" rarely find place, leaving room for an explosion of fantasy that fully blossoms in a macrocosm of emotional nuances. Here are Scriabin's indications: "more and more daring", "triumphant", "with haste and intoxication", "with lassitude and languor", "with noble and sweet majesty", "with ever-increasing intoxication", "almost delirious".
Reading them, one understands a good part of his inner world, an intoxicating world, convulsive and passionate, characterized by his feverish, mad search.
The ten Piano Sonatas, composed starting at the age of twenty, showcase an astonishing stylistic evolution, starting from the Chopin echoes of the First (1892), and reaching the very personal and nocturnal poetry of the Tenth (1913), composed two years before his death and full of expressionist harmonies. Each has its well-defined physiognomy, but the last five can be considered a synthesis of Scriabin's creative and philosophical life.
He was terrified of the Sixth and never played it in public because to him, it was "a terrifying nightmare, muddy, impure and malevolent", an esoteric sonic formula capable of unleashing dark forces. The Seventh, on the other hand, was loved by Scriabin, who subtitled it "White Mass", because its conflicts tend to resolve more towards light than towards darkness. The Eighth, more neutral in temperament than the previous two, rises in great melodies and presents, according to the composer, a harmony "derived from Nature". The Ninth, dubbed "Legendary" or also "Black Mass", showcases a structure of growing complexity and tension, reaching a cathartic climax of violence, unsurpassed in his music in intensity. In closing, the ingenious Tenth, or "Insect Sonata", so called by the composer due to the wild and chaotic swarming of its trills, but which also presents lyrical moments of sublime sweetness (as indeed the other sonatas do).
To the writer of these notes, these Sonatas, especially the latter ones, are among the most profound and disturbing musical works ever written, something sick and infected pervades them all deeply, and they are a vivid sonic testimony to the rot that festers within every man, of the spiritual corruption that can torment and obsess him.
A mad decadent idealism meets Debussy and leads him to hell, but the damnation is under the skin, outside there is gold and diamonds, at times a radiant sun.
P.S.: I found this interpretation by Vladimir Ashkenazy masterful, of great psychological depth, and I feel compelled to recommend it without ifs and buts, even without knowing others.
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