Release Date: 22 November 2024
Label: Etcetera
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 8711801018157
Genres: Classical Solo Instrumental
Description
Alexander Scriabin's (1872-1915) piano sonatas offer a uniquely encompassing insight into the composer's fascinating music and aesthetics, and their development over the span of his creative life.
Upon first listening, Scriabin's piano sonatas seem to be a group of widely different works written in unrelated styles, as if they would be the result of the creative labour of different composers. On closer and repeated listening, however, they emerge as individual crystallised stages in a sweeping process of philosophical and aesthetic metamorphosis - a process that encompasses the constraints of the composer's own condition, his developing musical thought, and his philosophical understanding of the cosmos and his own place in it. Contact with the mystic philosophy, namely Theosophy, and with Silver Age Symbolist artists and thinkers was crucial to this development.
The wealth of expression contained in Scriabin's sonatas - ranging from the passionate romantic outbursts of the first three, through the flights and ecstatic dances of the middle period's first three, through the late sonatas' musical representation of mystical dissolution - is, I would dare say, unparalleled in the history of music. This paradox of variety within unity, well enshrined in the mystic philosophy so dear to Scriabin, demands of the pianist (and the public) an intense effort in identifying each sonata's idiosyncrasies without losing the feeling of the whole.
'Cernadas can be delicate and sensual, but he also convinces with original articulation and a pronounced penchant for rubato and dynamic variations. His bold imagination never bores the listener. His interpretations remain rhythmically variable and lively because they respect the tension curves inherent in the music as well as the composer's mood indications in the sonatas, which are so different.' – Pizzicato
Featured on BBC Radio 3's Record Review on 23rd November: 'He does very well – overall this is a very important disc, and he is a terrific pianist. It's a real achievement and I love being taken on that journey by another pianist.'
Tracklisting
Musica Gloria, Nele Vertommen, Beniamino Paganini
Luc Berge, Jan Michiels, Inge Spinette, Ilse Eerens
Ryelandt Trio, Linde Verjans, Seamus Hickey
Jonas Seeberg
Bruno Monteiro, Joao Paulo Santos
Hendrickje Van Kerckhove, Eddy Vanoosthuyse, Severine Sierens, Hannelore Vermeir, Hans Ryckelynck,
Nuno Cernadas
Amy Norrington, Piet Kuijken
Anna Reichert
Anthony de Mare; Conrad Tao
Pierre-Stephane Meuge
Jonas Seeberg
Yonghuan Zhong
Szymon Nehring
Slava Guerchovitch
Nora von Marschall
