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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mysterious, Evocative, Complex, Wonderful, January 16, 2000
I was lucky enough to see the US premiere of the second part of Universe (Mankind) with Ashkenazy and the San Francisco Chorus/Orchestra in February, 1999, so I eagerly awaited this premiere recording of the complete Nemtin reconstructed Prefatory Act to Mysterium. This recording definitely lives up to my expectations with all the clarity and precision of most Ashkenazy/Decca recordings have. The gigantic symphonic forces perform very well and Askenazy believes in his performances and the work they are playing. Regarding the music, be forewarned, late Scriabin is very complex and this is the latest of his music. If you like late Mahler (such as his 9th/10th Symphonies) Schoernberg's orchestral works, or Scriabin's own Prometheus - Poem of Fire, imagine it of greater durations (oh...about three hours) and complexity. The work is scored for large orchestra, organ, wordless chorus, soprano, and virtuoso piano. The music alternates between atmospheric quite interludes to dramatic quadruple forte outbursts by full orchestra and organ. What might make this difficult for those unaccustomed to Prometheus to like is how quickly and unrelated the transitions between the dynamic levels might seem. The music is much more organic than melodic and has no discernable form or true melody per se - it sounds more like thoughts, sketches, or hallucinating impressions than a more traditional classical work. The prefatory act is in three sections and is the preparation of an unrealized mammoth weeklong work elaborate composition. The music of Mysterium for part 1 sounds much like Scriabin's Prometheus, Poem of Fire. It is complex, alternating loud and quite, and features a wordless chorus for about 10% of its full duration while in contrast, the piano plays a very important ornamental role. Part 2 - Mankind is the most apocalyptic section sounding halfway between Ravel's Daphne and Chloe (especially in both work's finale) and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The third part - Transfiguration begins ominously but evolves to a climax. Although Preparation for The Final Mystery is a realization by A. Nemtin of an unfinished grand vision by Scriabin, it really does sound convincing as a late work by Scriabin might have sounded. This CD set also includes a ballet Alexander Nemtin wrote after based on piano pieces by Scriabin. Personally, I loved "Nuances" and found it vividly orchestrated and reminding me of late Debussy with authentic Scriabin thrown into the mix - detailed, complicated, and colorful. Overall, if you don't mind complex organic music and have the patience to listen to the entire work before judging it, I strongly recommend it - the recording and performance is absolutely wonderful. If you like it, you clearly have an ear for megalomania and should try out Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony written around the same period and having the same all encompassing grand vision.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for all lovers of Scriabin--and of the overwhelming.., April 18, 2000
I waited a number of months before investing in this 190 minute Scriabinfest, but I have to say I should've jumped up and bought it right away. Why? A number of reasons. First, Nemtin's job in "realizing" the nearly unrealizable fantasy of Scriabin's later years deserves credit (and a good listen) for the sheer work it must have involved: the liner notes tell us that Nemtin virtually sacrificed his own career as a composer to finish this, the most grandiose of the Master's late works, from the measly 53 pages of sketches left behind. In fact, Nemtin worked from 1971 until 1996 on this labor of love, and I have to say the results are quite overwhelming. Any lover of Scriabin will recognize the pillow-deep climaxes, the gorgeous cantabiles, the slow-motion eroticism of his later works, but with an added touch. And this added touch is the second reason to buy this recording-the work puts into perspective just where Scriabin belongs in the continuum of 20th century music. When I listened to the second and third parts of this "Prefatory Action," (the first section, "Universe," is not filled with quite the musical incident that the latter two sections have) I could hear just how far "late Scriabin" goes toward the musical language of composers who wrote long after he died in 1915. It seems as though the fleshing out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the later pieces has resulted in a new sound altogether, a sound created by a more pointillistic approach to orchestration and a closer attention to the sounds created by the notes in collision (or by themselves, as in the massive F-sharp peroration at the end of "Transfiguration") and the quality of the notes themselves. In this sense, parts of this three-part Introduction to the Mysterium remind me of Webern, and even of Penderecki in some spots. Too, Scriabin/Nemtin's wild veering from brassy proclamations to intimate secret-telling and their sounding, at one point, of every note in the chromatic scale at once reminded me of Messiaen (cf. his Turangalila Symphonie) and of Ligeti (Atmospheres, used so memorably in Kubrick's 2001) respectively. Of course, as with some Scriabin (or any work of such vast proportions, for that matter) there are longeurs, but these are few and one's interest is generally held by the kaleidoscope of rich textures that Scriabin presents. The other work included, Nemtin's orchestrations of Scriabin's later piano works arranged into a meaningfully balletic sequence, is lovely, as well. And what about the recording itself? Well, it can handle both the massed use of the full orchestra, the wordless chorus, the soprano soloist, a piano and an organ, and still reproduce with stunning clarity the finest-spun thread of melody that Scriabin/Nemtin can weave. Of course, as with many recording done at this venue (the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin-Dahlem), the soundfield is set back a tad, but this isn't anything that a judicious fiddle with the volume knob can't control. All said, this venture is a must for all Scriabinites, but I would also recommend it to anyone interested in the music of the late-Romantic era and to anyone with a weakness for the solipsistic, the erotic, and the mystical. Get the set and revel in the experience!
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Into the Cosmos with Alexander Scriabin, February 8, 2001
Alexander Scriabin's (1872-1915) compositorial megalomania, nurtured by the Theosophical atmosphere in which he took care to live, ended up by outstripping his creative capacity; the last years of his life centered on the conception rather than the execution of a vast work called "Mysterium," for which its conceptor held out great expectations. Among other things, he thought that when it at last reached performance - in a special theater-cum-temple to be built in the Himalayas - all the hundreds of participants in it, and maybe the totality of mankind by a kind of sympathetic vibration with the performers, would be transformed into the Superman, thus initiating the new phase of spiritual evolution. (Oh, is that all?) Of course, "Mysterium" could exist only as a fanciful notion in Scriabin's rather fevered imagination. Already, in "The Poem of Ecstasy" (1908) and "Prometheus" (1915), he had pushed his peculiar, floating harmonic language, based on chords of the fourth, to its expressive limit; "Prometheus" was furthermore a briefer work than "The Poem of Ecstasy," just as the "Poem of Ecstasy" was briefer than its precursor, "The Divine Poem" (1903). As his ambition waxed, his perseverence waned. Nevertheless, a disorganization of sketches for "Mysterium" did survive Scriabin, and became the compelling idée fixe of the Soviet composer Alexander Nemtin (1936-1999), who devoted his life to "completing" the Master's transcendental project. The first fruits of Nemtin's posthumus collaboration with Scriabin appeared in the early 1970s as "Universe," on an Angel-Melodiya LP (later a Russian Disc CD), full of blazing trumpets and a wailing wordless chorus. Now the entire "restoration" of Scriabin's unwritten work at last manifests itself on no less than three Decca CDs, with Berlin forces led by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Not quite "Mysterium" (that necessarily indefinitely deferred musical chimera) but rather a "Preparation for the Final Mystery," this gigantic two-and-a-half hour work comprises three parts ("Universe," "Mankind," and "Transfiguration"), each further subdivided. Anyone who remembers the stand-alone "Universe" of thirty years ago (my college friends and I used to listen to it late at night on weekends while charging the air with smoke) already knows the character and measure of the new triptych. Is it a dinosaur, a lurching grotesque? It might well be. More than one critic has accused Scriabin of egomania and autoeroticism - not to mention messianism. But the music, as we have it, is also wild and magnificent, a tour-de-force of high-grade pastiche delivering no little reward of ecstasy provided one has the stamina to pass through the 160-minute initiation of it. The Soviets used to link Scriabin with the conquest of space, and "Prometheus" played over Moscow television when the cameras showed Yuri Gagarin riding his Vostok capsule into orbit. One gets the feeling that Ashkenazy and his players are rocketing into orbit too, and then floating there in weightlessness while looking out at the nebulae through black space. Maybe you need to have come of age around 1970, or have read a good deal of Olaf Stapledon ("Star Maker"), to appreciate this. If that describes you, buy this set. Like everything else sublime, it will vanish quickly, no doubt.
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