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Scriabin: Symphony 3/ Poem of Ecstasy

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Do you want your Scriabin red hot, glowing with intensity? Then this is for you! This is a very russian performance which includes cymbalclashes not heard in western performances and roller-coaster tempos. Since the recorded sound is basically rather low, you might be knocked out of your seat at climaxes if you adjust the level according to the more quiet sections. The poem of ecstasy is discs highlight, a truly revealing performance, where (for once) the orchestration doesn't sound heavy but almost transparent in places. Not a top-notch orchestra perhaps, but committed and with a luxuriant stringsection.

The critics and biographers of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)list his formative influences with near invariance: Chopin, of course,as attested by the early works for piano solo; Schumann; Tchaikovsky;and later Wagner, whose presence one senses strongly in the SecondSymphony (1901). Overlooked in this survey of "sources" isCésar Franck. Fifty years ago, however, in a chapter of his"Romanticism and the Twentieth Century," Wilfrid Mellers yokedFranck and Scriabin as a pair. That Franck provided Scriabin with aset of formal devices is at once obvious. Franck's Piano Quintet andhis Symphony in D-Minor both unify their three movements byreintroducing germinal motifs in each movement; Franck referred tothis as "cyclical form." Scriabin's Second Symphony is already"cyclical" in just this way; the Third Symphony, or "DivinePoem" (1903), is even more so, and in fact seems to lift the planof Franck's Quintet, or his Symphony, directly and shamelessly. But,as Mellers shows, the relation runs deeper; he goes as far as to callScriabin "an odd appendix to Franck's career." In so saying, heby no means intends to diminish Scriabin; rather, he finds inScriabin's music, as in Franck's, the projection of the composer's egoas a struggle between opposing erotic and transcendental principles.The result, in Franck, is either "eroticism curbed" or"rebellious passion that struggles to break free." The musicreflects the underlying tension. In Scriabin, however, "the bubbleof the inflated ego bursts." In the piano music, the Sixth Sonatasignalizes the incipient madness; in the orchestral music, "TheDivine Poem" provides the token. Igor Golovshin understands (asdid Nicolai Golovanov) that a Scriabin orchestral score is anall-or-nothing proposition; the conductor cannot tame but can onlyunleash it. His Naxos recording with the Moscow Symphony Orchestrabrings out the full pyrotechnic display of the gigantic FirstMovement, the "Luttes" ("Struggles"), wherein Scriabindepicts the conflict between the mundane and the celestial elementswithin the human soul. This is as much a treatment of the Nietzchean"Superman" idea as Strauss' roughly contemporary "Also SprachZarathustra." The low brass in the opening assault make aparticularly impressive showing. As has become the custom, the firstninety seconds or so get their own track, followed by the main body ofthe movement. In the Second Movement, the "Voluptés"("Delights"), Golovshin maintains the tension even while slowingdown the pace in comparison to the norm. (He is longer than most inall three movements.) In the Finale, "Jeu Divin" ("DivinePlay"), Golovshin pushes and pulls at the tempi, but convincingly,infusing the music with a feeling of life that it does not alwayshave. The coda has to be heard to be believed. The other item on theprogram is "Le poème de l'extase," sometimes catalogued asScriabin's Fourth Symphony. This too is an exercise in theunrestrained. In an essay on Scriabin, Colin Wilson once bluntlydescribed "Le poème de l'extase" as orchestral autoeroticism, ajudgment that Mellers also implies. Music for a gnostic century?Maybe so. In any case, this disc is a first-rate, inexpensive avenueinto Scriabin's weird world.