Scriabin was part of Yevgeny Sudbin’s early success. His fourth recording for an initial five-year contract with BIS was a mixed recital of solo works from all stages of Scriabin’s career, including excoriating accounts of Sonatas Nos 2, 5 and 9. ‘No pianist of any generation’, enthused Bryce Morrison, ‘has in my experience captured Scriabin’s volatility so vividly as Sudbin’ (12/07 – it was an Editor’s Choice). I see no reason to disagree with that 18 years later. An imperious account of Scriabin’s underrated Concerto appeared in 2014. Still with BIS, Sudbin, now 44, returns with another mixed recital that is the equal (and more) of his earlier one.

Opening with a late work, Vers la flamme (1914), we are plunged almost at once into Scriabin’s unpredictable world of intense drama and emotion. Few composers do ecstasy quite as well as this composer, and few works of his match the rapturous delirium of the Fourth Sonata, to which Sudbin responds as if it were the last piece he was ever going to play. An outstanding performance, with golden tone and crunching fortissimos.

One thing that stands out here and throughout the programme is the quasi-improvisatory quality Sudbin brings to proceedings, as if a fabulously endowed spirit were ad-libbing at the keyboard, going wherever his feverish imagination took him. Try the Fantaisie, Op 28, which comes after two delectable Preludes from Op 11 and before four Études from Op 8, No 11 of which bears comparison with Horowitz’s live 25th-anniversary performance in 1953, as does Sudbin’s C sharp minor Étude, Op 42 No 5, both pianists dispatching it with the affanato (‘breathless’) passion the composer requests.

Personally, I have never warmed to the Tenth Sonata with its wearisome dissonance and relentless succession of trills and shakes, full of sound and fury and signifying very little. I listened to it dutifully admiring Sudbin’s varied tonal colouring and the awesome technical ease with which he attacks this dauntingly notated score. For the end he has chosen a pair of pieces from the opposite end of Scriabin’s career – the lovely Prelude and Nocturne for the left hand alone. No point in playing them unless you can deceive the listener’s ear. I challenge any innocent newcomer to spot the missing hand, so artful are Sudbin’s sleight of hand and pedal technique. I must add that the piano is beautifully voiced and recorded. A superb recital in which the pianist inhabits the composer – and contributes his own perceptive booklet to boot. Warmly recommended.