Naxos has turned up trumps with the little-known Russian Evgeny Zarafiants. Rhythmically subtle (and continually supple), tonally expansive and dramatically wide-ranging, he plays this music with great conviction, and a technique which copes conformably with all challenges. Even in the most tempestuous and tortuous passages, his tone is never strident, and his harmonic colouring could profitably be emulated by many pianists of ten times his renown. This release can be highly recommended, not least for the excellent recorded sound.

With this second volume Evgeny Zarafiants completes his superb survey of Scriabin's 86 Preludes, adding four Preludes by Julian Scriabin, the composer's precociously gifted son, as encores. Listening to music of such morbid and refined intricacy played with the finest musical poise and commitment returns us to Stravinsky's bemused question, 'Scriabin, where does he come from, and who are his followers?' Is the angst and angry convolution of, say, Op 27 No 1 a slavonic memory of Brahms's Op 118 No 1? Does the explosive whimsy of Op 35 No 3 take its cue from the Scherzo of Beethoven's Op 26 Sonata? The hair-raising presto of Op 67 No 2 recalls the menace and enigma of the finale from Chopin's Op 35 Sonata, while the terse and belligerant Op 33 No 3 looks ahead to Stravinsky's sharpest modernist utterances. Yet if there are countless examples of reflection and prophecy, there are still more of the most startling originality.
Scriabin is always Scriabin, and as he journeys from Op 22 to Op 74 into the darkest reaches of the imagination you're reminded that this is hardly music for the faint-hearted.
Once again, Zarafiants is equal to each and every vivid occasion. Whether in the fragrant grazioso of Op 22 No 2, where the line twists and turns like so much honeysuckle, in the toppling argument of Op 31 No 3, or in the sauvage belliqueux of Op 59 No 2, he's richly responsive, his playing alive with a rare pianistic skill and imaginative brio. The Brandon Hill recordings are resonant and full-blooded.