Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70

“[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 ****

“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 shows a deep understanding of this music.” Diapason

“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 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

“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

“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

“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 ****

“Exquisitely shaded and beautifully characterised Scriabin performances here” BBC Music Magazine, December 2010 *****

“an original, excellently planned programme tracing the links from Romanticism to modernism. Thoughtful playing.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ****