Chandos’s annotator Hugh Macdonald reminds us that Scriabin believed his music would ‘usher in the new millennium’. Listening now to Prometheus is like looking at those mythical biplanes and high-risers that helped illustrate Marinetti’s version of futurism. True, the opening chord conjures ominous shadows and suffocating humidity (I still maintain that it is one of the most frightening sounds in all music) but it seems that the musical gateway to the new millennium willbe purer, clearer and less excessively coloured than Scriabin might have imagined.
Pierre Boulez would evidently agree, for in pitting his 1996 Chicago recording against Rozhdestvensky’s Hague sessions of some 19 months later we soon find him to be both more leisurely and more luminous than his Russian rival. Compare the point where the pianist first enters (1'54'' on Chandos, 2'10'' on DG), and hear – no, feel – how much freer Rozhdestvensky and Postnikova sound. Boulez’s reading is well ordered but rather angular and low-voltage, whereas this later performance (a magnificent production sonically, by the way) is more effective at suggesting Scriabin’s volatile brand of mysticism. The piano is a more central presence, so much so in fact that you could as well label the work a second piano concerto as a fifth symphony.
In the Piano Concerto ‘proper’, comparisons suggest a very different picture. Postnikova gives an expansive performance, lovingly accompanied, whereas Ugorski and Boulez take a simpler approach. They are also rather less prone to linger, particularly in the second movement (10'02'' on Chandos, 8'42'' on DG) where, at the outset, Boulez has his players phrase with particular sensitivity. I still stand by his recording (Urgorski offers the more elegant account of the solo part) but Postnikova will probably appeal to readers who view this piece as a latish-flowering of the Russian romantic ‘piano concerto’ tradition. On the other hand, I prefer Rozhdestvensky’s Prometheus and was pleased to encounter his well managed orchestration of the Fantasy, an attractive if somewhat insubstantial work (it plays for under nine minutes) that Scriabin left as a piano score with a ‘second piano’ accompaniment. Boulez’s third item is an attentive but ultimately underwhelming Poem of Ecstasy. Again, Chandos’s sound has impressive amplitude and bloom.
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