Initially idolised by a small coterie, Scriabin was also vilified by
those who placed reason above passion, clarity above obscurity. Today he
enjoys a near classic status and Garrick Ohlsson’s disc of the complete Poèmes provides ample food for thought. Having notched up a huge array
of recordings combined with an intensive concert career, his playing now
reflects rich experience and musical quality. True, those accustomed to
Horowitz’s incandescent response to Scriabin’s neurosis may feel
themselves short-changed by Ohlsson’s restraining hand, by a more
settled view of an unsettled genius. But there are admirable
compensations in playing that can contain even Scriabin’s wilder, least
accessible outpourings.
At the same time, even Ohlsson cannot
entirely erase evidence of writing of such self-conscious liberation
that it finally and ironically becomes caged in its own conventions.
Whether frantic or remote, one poème becomes much like another and many
of the composer’s more bizarre titles and instructions (Désir, Caresse dansée, Festivamente, fastoso, Etrange, capricieusement,
etc) come to seem like a form of desperation, of special pleading in
the face of public and critical bafflement. But whether in the Scherzo,
Op 46 (jocular in an ironic sense), in the gazelle-like leaps of the Poème ailé, Op 51 No 3, or in the one substantial offering, Vers la flamme,
you feel grateful for Ohlsson’s refusal to indulge or over-reach.
Finely recorded, his empathy with so many fragmented dreamscapes is
lucid and sensitive. (Gramophone)
Thank you !
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