Sinopoli's Divin poeme starts off with an immediate advantage over the others listed above: it has the obvious and perfect coupling. Pritchard's splendid performance on BBC Artium has no fill-up at all (nor any cueing bands, tut-tut), Barenboim on Erato offers a reading of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms so good that it points up the very slight stodginess of his Scriabin, while Muti's admirable EMI version is let down by 20 minutes of disappointingly glum Tchaikovsky (Romeo and Juliet). The New York Philharmonic, too, play with exceptional fire, colour and precision for Sinopoli (the superb horns are particularly fine) and the DG recording is both sumptuously big and finely detailed (only the BBC Artium sound for Pritchard approaches it in quality: Muti's EMI has a touch of glare at times, Barenboim's Erato has the slight imprecision and congestion that seem inseparable from live recordings of works as heavily scored as this).
Sinopoli's performance is an uncommonly compelling one, too: the introduction less expectantly mysterious than Pritchard's, the heady ardours of the slow movement (''Voluptes'') less yearning, but with a splendid springing urgency throughout that gives a real sense of unity and forward movement. He is as good at firmly controlled fine rubato as you would expect from his Puccini recordings, but for me the greatest pleasure of this performance is the beautiful balancing of orchestral texture: not one passage sounds muddy or over-scored; the 'garden-music' in the slow movement, warmly bright and bird-song-bedecked, is especially lovely. In this respect and in the unforced, satisfying amplitude of the climaxes he surpasses even Pritchard, which makes Sinopoli's Poeme de l'extase a luxurious bonus, and of this I haven't heard a better performance on record. Even in the most swooningly vaporous pages there is a care for detail and clarity of balance that neither Abbado (DG: hugely febrile and vital but rather glassily recorded) nor Barenboim (Erato; decent enough, but a bit lacking in urgency) can match. Both these latter performances, in any case, are side-dishes to main courses that may not be to the taste of every Scriabin collector (a beautiful but soft-grained Stravinsky Rite of Spring in Barenboim's case, excellent readings of Debussy and Ravel in Abbado's). Maazel's fine Decca version is indispensably coupled with the only versions available on CD at present of Scriabin's Piano Concerto (with Ashkenazy) and of his orchestral masterpiece, Prometheus. But in the splendour of the C major conclusion to the Poeme de l'extase even Maazel is outclassed by Sinopoli, and DG's recording here is if anything even better than that of the Divin poeme.MEO