Customer Reviews

Alexander Scriabin The Complete Etudes

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Mr.Ohlsson performed all pieces on Steinway, Style 4 Concert Grand 1876 which has deeper and sweeter tones, but less clarity than the modern Steinway.
I will mention just for Op.2 and Op.8, but Op.49, 56, 65 are all excellent by the way.
The first piece is Op.2, No.1 which I have just listened to Richter's and Horowitz's. I give 5 stars for all 3 performings.
Op.8 No.1,2,3,4,5 are all excellent.
My favorite is No.3. Mr.ohlsson played with a different interpretation than others that I have heard, for example: Pier Lanes, he played with faster tempo and tempest as the piece is marked "Tempestoso", but his tempest is like a chimpanzee turning to rampage compare to Ohlsson which like Gorilla's. Mr.Ohlsson started softly but furious, the B major chord at the bass line is powerful, especially at the ending.
For No.5, I heard very few pianist performed this piece. Mr.Ohlsson played it as the same way as Richter's, very beautiful and dramatic.
Op.8, No.10 is the combination of chromatic in right hand and wide-ranging in left hand. Here Mr.Ohlsson played the left hand chords loud and powerful.In the ending, the piece is marked ppp, but he played even louder than the middle section, like Mr. Horowitz.
The highlight of the set is No.12. He started loud and fast and I heard that he played the 11th chord(D#-G#) in the left hand loud and clearly without rolling. I have heard many pianists playing this piece, but all of them play this chord with rolling. From what I have heard, there are only Ohlsson and Cliburn who can play this chord without rolling. In the middle section his playing is one of the best I have heard. Overall is superb, the beautiful is beautiful and the sorrow is sorrow, but there is a big mistake at time 1:35 and I don't know why they didn't re-record.
Scriabin etudes are difficult to understand and some won't be satisfacted you at the first time, but in this set, Mr.Ohlsson can bring out Scriabin's passion and interpretation.It is the best Scriabin etudes set I have heard so far.

PS. Sorry for my bad english. I'm not native english, but this the best i can do.

Ohlsson truly can play anything, and plays it better than almost anybody. I have heard and read through the years that Ohlsson is known by other pianists as "the pianists pianist". His musical soul can identify with all composers, and his technique can handle the most fiendish virtuoso playing to the most serenely simple melodic passage. These Etudes are challenging on many levels. I happen to have played the c# minor op.2.#1. and the d# min. op.8, #12 - I mention this because I hope I am able to help the reader understand musically and technically what is going on, in case they don't know. The c# min. one is a study in legato (smooth) playing - gliding from one note to the next with no breaks. It also presents counter melodies, harmonies in the left hand - presenting a challenge in how to balance these melodies. The melodies are gorgeous Russian melancholy - ending in beautiful, sad peace. The d# min. is wild!! It starts loud, with flying octaves, in triplet rhythm, in both hands - contrary motion. As the drama opens, the octaves become filled with massive chords - the difficulty (besides hitting the correct notes!)is controlling the SOUND - saving the greatest climax for the massive chordal end! Ohlsson does it perfectly - you just sit back and say "WOW"!!! The entire CD is wonderful.

Garrick Ohlsson, the great virtuoso with more than 80 concertos and a huge amount of solo recital programmes in his current repertoire, the artist with an impressive discography behind him (ranging form Bach and Handel to the most contemporary opuses), the American who in Warsaw some 40 years ago won the Gold Medal of the famous "Frederic Chopin" International Competition for pianists, is now worldwide recognized as the undisputed master of the Chopinesque style.

Therefore, his approach to the music of Alexander Scriabin seems at a large extent a natural and awaited step further on this line, since the Russian composer claimed for himself the quality of musical successor with regard to Chopin. Even the forms he expressed his music through were borrowed from Chopin's arsenal, involving especially miniatures such as nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes, impromptus or... studies, as the case is with the recording under consideration here.

In this complete set of Etudes a certain Chopinesque flavour can still be detected, though the boldness in Scriabin's compositions goes beyond the technical uncanny solutions he masterfully exploited (strange harmonies, mixed wild tempos etc) and pinpoints towards new esthetical horizons. Even the essence of music is questioned from an esoteric point of view, while an attractive extravagance occurs by means of uneven combinations of notes, daring chords and daunting phrases. The atmosphere becomes rather lascivious, of sonorus magnificence and lasting effect, yet not accessible to all interpreters.

To bring all these to life, Garrick Ohlsson resorts to an old Steinway (the historical "Style 4 Concert Grand" built in 1876, kept in very good shape), which supplies a warm, dense and profound - yet direct - sound.

The calm, ample, perfumed C sharp minor Etude op.2 (first in the series, composed when Scriabin was only 15) is a pale sample for what is to come. The stormy etudes (such as the famous op.8 No.12, op. 8 No.9 op.65 No.3 or op.42 No.5) call for a demanding technical armour: velocity, precision, power, fiendish finger-bending, stunning cascades on the keyboard. Whilst the lyrical ones (like op.8 No.11 or op.42 No.4) for a sheer poetic sensitivity.

All these skills Garrick Ohlsson probes to possess abundantly. By magisterially alternating them, he gets a marvellous result! I think this CD is the best way to get acquaintance with this strange music, as a whole. After repeated listening, at certain stage, it can almost be a delight - try it and you won't be disappointed!

Ohlsson plays this music on an 1876 Steinway. Far from being a gimmick, the piano provides clarity and color across its range, while Ohlsson allows each etude it's own unique character. This makes for a set of etudes that is absorbing all the way through. I don't feel over-saturated by the end of it, as can happen with this music in less-expert hands. This is fantastic playing.

Mr. Ohlsson, we didn't know you were a Scriabinist, but now that you've done this, it's time to record sonatas 6, 7 and 8.
Please.

I have obtained this CD not because I am a Scriabinista, but because I am an Ohlssonista. For a long time I was afraid to listen to this CD, since I thought that the experience would never match that of the live performance of Scriabin by Maestro Ohlsson at Ravinia, which I have attended.
This CD was not a disappointment! I was able to re-live some of the experience of Scriabin's strange and, for me, modern music. One has to listen to this CD multiple times. Thanks to Mr. Ohlsson's trademark clarity of performance and his ability to somehow deconstruct and simultaneously re-construct the most difficult music, one can befriend Scriabin. The notes for this CD, written by Malcolm MacDonald, succeed in describing the strangely attractive music of Scriabin as: "exercise in shivery chromatic gossamer", "hectic, mystically passionate", "extreme chromaticism", "taking tonality towards its outer limits", "flickering, firefly velocity", "rippling, capricious", and much more. For me, being an Ohlssonista has paid off. I am able to listen to difficult music and understand it so much better from focused and clean interpretation by Ohlsson. Yes, the CD is great, but the live concert was an event in a life-time.