Scriabin: Vers la flamme, Op. 72

“[Scriabin] is a composer you might expect would bring the best out of Mustonen, that he would respond well to the obsessiveness that characterises late Scriabin especially...Mustonen can't quite conjure the sheer hallucinatory weirdness that puts Vladimir Horowitz's recordings of these works in a class of their own, but he has a very good try.” The Guardian, 22nd March 2012 ***

“An extraordinary pianist for extraordinary music. This is Scriabin as you have never heard him before, played by one of music's most formidable and compulsive free spirits...The music is made to leap flame-like and uncontained from the page and you could cut yourself on Mustonen's glittering sonority...Mustonen's beady and dazzling pianism in truly hypnotic...Few pianists have a more potent sense of the demoniac in music.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2012

“Mustonen emphasises the music's stylistic antecedents, rather than looking forward to the expressive ambivalence of Scriabin's later music...Whatever the technical demands involved, Mustonon always lets each miniature breath. His concentration on Scriabin's internal logic, rather than poetic suggestiveness, pays dividends in the Tenth Sonata” BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 ****

“The intensity with which Paterson-Olenich conveys Scriabin’s vision is, on several of the tracks, unrivalled in recent recordings. Several performances really stand out; I was impressed by the austerity and poise of the Prelude, op.67 No.1, the brilliance and range of colour employed in the Op.65 Studies and Vers la flamme, the dark intensity of the Ninth Sonata. This disc is a testament to Paterson-Olenich’s affinity with Scriabin’s late music.” International Piano, September/October 2001

“Time and again he allows one to savour every aspect of Scriabin’s neurotic sensibility...playing with spaciousness and lucidity, never whirled into obscure agitation by the composer’s idiosyncratic directionsPaterson-Olenich has contributed his own lively and informed essay, and the recordings...are excellent. An exceptional, very personal issue.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2001

“The first recording from this new label brings a powerfully expressive recital of Scriabin's most searching works, including the "White" and "Black" Masses, Piano Sonata No.10 and Vers la flamme. The young Brighton-born pianist tackles them all with astonishing assurance: a most auspicious début.” The Independent, 9th September 2000

“Brighton-born, Moscow-trained Yuri Paterson-Olenich shows real understanding of Scriabin's visionary music, including one of the weirdest sonatas, the Seventh. What he lacks in sheer volume he makes up for in poetic dreaminess, though textures are always clear.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2000

“Paterson-Olenich, born in Brighton in 1974, is a Russian-trained pianist who makes light of Scriabin’s fiendishly difficult scores. He does not quite match those volcanic outbursts of the great Scriabin pianists, though he is superb in the delicate sonorities of the Poems.” Yorkshire Evening Post

“Paterson-Olenich shows a deep understanding of this music.” Diapason

“A starry pianistic line-up give their all in Scriabin's microcosmic soundworlds, highlighted by Gavrilov's Fourth, Trpceski's Fifth and Pletnev's Tenth sonatas, alongside Ogdon's hypnotic Vers la flamme.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2011 ****

“How he relishes Chopin's influence...His performance of the Fourth Sonata ('towards a blue flame') is a marvel of clarity and musicianship...More generally, everything is given with a warmth and sincerity that are the reverse of extravagance or self-conscious idiosyncrasy: as an introduction to Scriabin's compulsive genius this disc could hardly be bettered.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2012

“although she brings out their poetry and reveals witty dexterity in Flight of the Bumblebee, Le Guay is no match for the great interpreters in certain cornerstones of the repertory.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2012 ***

“Personal and eloquent, warm and affectionate, nothing is heavily personalised or idiosyncratic. For the most part her manner is gentle and caressing, almost as if played before a small circle of intimate friends...In larger-scale Scriabin and Rachmaninov her unerring balance of sense and sensibility provides a fine alternative to, say, Horowitz's searing intensity” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012

“Amoyel's first-rate pianism puts clarity, proportion, and controlled freedom above all else and keeps the music's volatile undercurrents alive and active” Classics Today

“Pascal Amoyel admits he was driven close to neurosis when preparing his Scriabin recording and found it difficult to re-emerge into the world of other composers. Aphoristic or endlessly protracted, seemingly lost in a harmonic limbo or fiercely to the point, such music is indeed challenging to both listener and performer.
For Amoyel the tirelessly extended Poème-nocturne is 'phantasmagorical, ill-defined and confused' (terms he intends as the greatest compliment) and his playing on what he describes as a 'rather sombre-sounding Steinway' amply conveys his enthusiasm.
He is acutely sensitive to the dark mystery at the heart of the Op 41 Poème, its final section a decadent memory of Chopin's Op 10 No 6 Etude, and responds with refinement as well as energy to the Poème tragique with its demands of festivamente, fastoso, irato and fiero. In the Poème satanique (music indelibly associated with Sofronitsky) light is stalked by darkness in a menacing game of tag, while the enchanting Op 38 Valse is an all- Russian extension of the world of Liszt's Valsesoubliées. The Op 69 No 2 Poème is a notably grotesque danse macabre and in the final Vers laflamme Amoyel takes us on a mesmeric journey from threatening shadows to searing brilliance.
Yet even here he resists virtuoso temptations, making it odd that he should be described in France as one of Cziffra's 'spiritual heirs'. Confidentiality and insinuation are his hallmarks rather than wildness or flamboyance. Calliope's sound, like Amoyel's instrument, is subdued but it hardly detracts from an experience that is stifling or exhilarating, according to taste.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Amoyel makes the 3 minutes of this first Poème blissful to listen to - a sweet polyphony of floating lines, a pure rubato. In the title of Poème languide, the manner is explicit, but there are also heavily insistent, iteratively chordal items, such as Poème satanique. Vers la flamme memorably combines the approaches. Poème fantasque self-destructs in 29 seconds.” Sunday Times

“Wang plays all this music with a special brilliance and refinement… she comes up with a performance of Vers la flamme that moves superbly from a brooding menace to a final apocalyptic blaze. …an unusually perceptive introduction to Scriabin's piano music...” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2009

“Sciabin's late piano pieces remain among the most revolutionary ever written for the instrument. These Morceaux, Poèmes, Danses and Préludes certainly call for a player of unusual insight… with the requisite technical command to give substance to the insubstantial. In all this Crossley succeeds admirably...” BBC Music Magazine, August 2008 *****

“Virtuoso ease and well modulated, evenly balanced sonorities have always marked Paul Crossley's way with repertoire that fuses thorny and sensual elements.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008