Scriabin: Waltz in A flat major, Op. 38

“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

“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

“This is music that demands pianism of superlative quality, and here Yevgeny Sudbin miraculously combines the volcanic intensity of Vladimir Horowitz with the cat-and-mouse tonal reflexes of Mikhail Pletnev.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 *****

“…no pianist of any generation has, in my experience, captured Scriabin's volatility so vividly as Sudbin. All these performances are flecked with personal touches and brilliances above and beyond even Scriabin's wildest demands. Finally, BIS captures Sudbin's astonishing range of colours and sonorities, ranging from the utmost delicacy to an enraged uproar, in crystalline demonstration sound. This, put suitably euphorically, is a disc in a million.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2007

“Writing in prose as delirious as his playing, Yevgeny Sudbin speaks in his accompanying nine-page essay of the incomprehension that greeted Scriabin's half-crazed genius in both Russia and the West. This is entirely apt and no pianist of any generation has surely captured Scriabin's volatility so vividly as Sudbin.
In his choice of sonatas (ranging through Scriabin's early, middle and late periods), his mix of drama and introspection are positively alchemic and entirely his own. It is as if the music's very nerve ends are exposed to view and rarely has a pianist been prepared to take such risks on record. He takes virtuosity to the very edge at the end of the Fifth Sonata and his daredevil aplomb is at its height in the Ninth, suitably named Black Mass Sonata.
How he varies the colour, light and shade in the early D sharp minor Etude so that its familiar heroic octaves sound newly minted and never merely frenetic! His selection of Mazurkas is given with a breathtaking subtlety, making you long to hear him in Chopin, while his response to Scriabin's command in the Fifth Sonata, presto tumultuoso esaltato, is like the vortex of a whirlwind. All these performances are flecked with personal touches and brilliances above and beyond even Scriabin's wildest demands.
Finally, BIS captures Sudbin's astonishing range of colours and sonorities, ranging from the utmost delicacy to an enraged uproar, in crystalline demonstration sound. This, put suitably euphorically, is a disc in a million.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The Nine Mazurkas, Op 25, are particularly successful, Katsaris's enchanting, quasi-improvisational coaxing prompting the irreverent thought that he (or is it Scriabin?) might have made a good jazz pianist.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2007