Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 'Black Mass' (Messe Noire)

“There’s intelligent method in this two-disc mega-recital...Disc two ingeniously pairs four works from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage collections with descriptive pieces by Bartok, Marco Stroppa, Ravel and Messiaen, highlighting poetic, formal, textural and gestural similarities galore. Aimard’s readings are characterised by a clarity that allows detail and shape rightful pre-eminence.” Sunday Times, 16th October 2011

“Bombarded as we are by Liszt recordings in his anniversary year, this is refreshingly different. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is also a skilled maker of programmes...Since large quantities of Liszt in one sitting can be indigestible, this is an excellent way into the B minor sonata and sections of Années de pèlerinage.” The Observer, 16th October 2011

“Aimard has long established himself as the thinking person’s pianist. His Liszt Project juxtaposes a selection of Liszt’s works with compositions by contemporaries and successors who were inspired by him...It’s a strong idea, sustained by the Frenchman’s fastidious pianism, but it comes across more as a lecture-recital than a satisfying listening experience.” Financial Times, 30th October 2011

“Aimard is a supremely intellectual pianist and his intense, rigorously thought-out playing illuminates the two programmes...Aimard's approach is purposefully cool in order to highlight the structural elements of the piece and while there's some exquisite hushed playing, the thunderous climaxes don't build with quite enough abandon.” Classic FM Magazine, February 2012 ****

“This impressive double album is surely one of the most intelligent recorded contributions to the Liszt Bicentenary of 2011...Nothing in Aimard's performances is done for mere effect: throughout, he projects Liszt with a solidity and refinement of invention. A superb achievement.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2012 *****

“In the main, the later the Liszt the more impressive Aimard is...he is ideally persuasive that no composer stayed younger in his desire to make something new...Aimard's reading of the B minor Sonata is distinguished - intellectually satisfying, as it should be, as the most intelligent and far-reaching of all post-Beethoven sonatas on a large scale.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2011

“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 fascinating glimpse into the teaching methods of a Russian master pianist...Sofronitsky’s charisma, the fascination he held for so many musicians...shine[s] through...Sofronitsky’s spontaneity and vitality can be enchanting; never more so than in the final section of ‘Promenade’ from Carnaval where Schumann leaves his dancing magic and glides into reverie.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2002

“The recording is primitive, but his points are all clearly caught, usually reinforced by demonstrations, and his unclichéing of his pupils' playing is meticulously indexed with carefully labelled translations in the booklet.” Irish Times, 29th August 2002

“Uniquely treasurable and inspiring performances in ideal remastered sound." Gramophone

“Recorded live at Richter's beloved Aldeburgh in 1966, this issue shows an incomparable pianist at the height of his powers. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a more authentic yet personal voice in Prokofiev's Fourth and Scriabin's Ninth Sonatas. Richter carved out a special niche in Prokofiev's Fourth Sonata, the most cryptic and ambiguous of the series written in a language that can seem oddly exclusive and inaccessible to those born outside Russia. No other pianist has approached Richter in this work, in his capacity to clarify so much awkward writing while at the same time (in the central Andante assai) acknowledging a wholly individual utterance full of dark confidences and, in the finale, a forced gaiety alive with stiff virtuoso challenges resolved in a mock-triumphant coda.
Few performances of the Scriabin have been more stealthily mobile or breathed a more satanic menace. For once, directions such as avecune douceur de plus en plus caressante et empoisonnée are made meaningful rather than merely idiosyncratic or eccentric. Yet, in more amiable territory Richter is enviably poised, less remote or enigmatic in Mozart's G major Sonata, K283, than one might have expected. His opening Allegro is gently flowing and is memorably contrasted with his brilliantly vivacious finale.
The recordings have come up excellently, allowing us to appreciate Richter's range, unique empathy in Russian music and endlessly thoughtprovoking musicianship in all their glory.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Incandescent, fleet-fingered historic performances from the mid-1950s, whose quicksilver emotional reflexes (generously pedalled) mirror exactly the music's neurotic restlessness and pulverising indomitability.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2011 ****

“Andrei Korobeinikov's recital of music taken from the Scriabin's middle and late periods, alternating light and darkness, exultation and desolation, will surely become a compulsory addition to all lovers of his neurotic and compulsive genius.
At 22 this Russian pianist already ranks among his foremost interpreters. A graduate in law as well as music, won a glittering array of awards and is presently pursuing graduate studies at the Royal College of Music. Such largesse is reflected in playing of an unswerving musical honesty backed by a gargantuan technical command. His tempo for the Fourth Sonata's opening Andante may be exceptionally slow but it is sustained with rare poise and concentration; and if the following Prestissimovolando is less mercurial than from others it is once again totally convincing in its own ultra- Russian terms.
Korobeinikov goes through the second of the Deux poèmes, Op 32, and the Fifth Sonata's final outburst in a blaze of elemental thunder and lightning. And his authority is no less unarguable in the Eighth Sonata's extra-territorial wanderings and in Vers la flamme where Scriabin's obsessive patterning receives its ultimate nemesis. Such playing, finely recorded and presented, makes further recordings by this phenomenally gifted young pianist a necessity rather than a probability.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…playing of an unswerving musical honesty backed by a gargantuan technical command.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Korobeinikov unleashes the sonatas' pent-up fury with such wonderfully unbuttoned directness that it is hard to complain. There are no half measures in his playing, the technique is formidable; it is a genuinely thrilling disc.” The Guardian, 27th June 2008 ****