Scriabin: Vers a flamme

Nineteen years after his first recital devoted to the music of Alexander Scriabin (BIS1568), Yevgeny Sudbin returns to the works of this eccentric Russian composer with a new recital that brings together pieces composed at various points in his career. Of his special relationship with this composer, Sudbin writes: 'I simply cannot think of any other composer who consistently brings out such a primordially raw and physical reaction in me and, with time, his grip has only intensified on me.' Arthur Rubinstein once said that 'Scriabin's music is like a narcotic. It is so intoxicating that it can become dangerous', to which Sudbin adds by way of precaution, 'enjoy responsibly at your own peril.'

Carefully prepared by Sudbin, the programme reveals Scriabin's stylistic evolution, from his beginnings when he was still influenced by Chopin and devoted to small forms, through his middle period where the rich, late-romantic idiom is just beginning to cross into darker, more complex realms, on to his late period in which, in Sudbin's words, 'one sometimes feels too close to the edge of insanity'. In his latter works, Scriabin indeed seems to push music to the expressive limits in order to create a climate of spiritual ecstasy.