Yevgeny Sudbin plays Scriabin

Yevgeny Sudbin’s new album, his second dedicated to Scriabin, comes in a year in which the composer has received a great deal of attention, with excellent new sonata cycles from Yunjie Chen and Elina Akselrud. Since I first became aware of Sudbin on listening to his album of Tchaikovsky and Medtner concertos in 2007, I have been consistently mesmerised by the light and understanding he brings to everything he plays, and this new release is no exception.

The album takes its title from the opening piece, Vers la flamme - one of Scriabin’s last works, which Sudbin describes in his enlightening notes as being ‘like a ritualistic exercise’ in mysticism and transfiguration. The quiet murmur of its opening attracts immediate attention, Sudbin creating tension from the first notes. In less than six minutes Subdin builds towards the inexorable ending with beautifully measured dynamics and simmering tension, and with such control that nothing breaks the atmosphere the composer has so skilfully created. He does so with more definition than the composer's son-in-law Vladimir Sofronitsky, who revels more in the impressionistic qualities of each moment, though this is perhaps partly emphasised by the different recording technologies of the time, and both are important views of this piece.

Sudbin enunciates the skittish, restless qualities of the second movement of Op. 30, yet he doesn’t shy away from the shadows, with a nicely judged combination of tonal warmth and clarity. In the Fantaisie in B minor, where there is more of the passionate intensity that Horowitz found in Scriabin’s music, Sudbin draws a richness from the piano and explores the wide dynamic range, his hushed pianissimos, which never fail to speak, making the surges and climaxes all the more effective. That passion is virtuosically searing in the second movement of the fourth sonata - the piece which closes this programme.

Sudbin's variety of approach is one of the things that makes this album special. Scriabin’s music can plumb the depths of darkness, but his synaesthesia engaged him in a vast range of colours. In the eleventh of the Op.11 preludes, the romantic side of Scriabin comes to the fore. As in the Fantaisie, there are hints of Rachmaninoff and Liszt in the writing, and Subdin elucidates these without ever losing sight of the unique and enigmatic nature of Scriabin.

In taking each piece on its own terms, Sudbin explores the composer openly and without blanket preconceptions. Prelude, Op. 16 No. 3 has a character I find redolent of a Vaughan-Williams wayfaring song, and Sudbin doesn’t shy away from that, even though the Englishman is unlikely to have been in the mind of the composer or pianist. It serves as another example of how much variety there is in Scriabin’s writing, and of how freely Sudbin gives that variety expression.

Yevgeny Sudbin’s exclusive relationship with BIS has resulted in some treasurable recordings, all combining the pianist’s articulate musicianship with excellent sound, in hi-res downloads and on Hybrid SACD. This new album is a superb addition to his catalogue and leaves me looking forward to what he does next.