Yevgeny Sudbin, piano
Nineteen years after his first recital devoted to the music of Alexander Scriabin [BIS-1568], Yevgeny Sudbin returns to the works of this eccentric Russian composer with a new recital that brings together pieces composed at various stages of his career. Of his special relationship with the composer, Sudbin writes: “I simply cannot think of any other composer who consistently brings out such a primordially raw and physical reaction in me, and, with time, his grip has only intensified.” Arthur Rubinstein once said that “Scriabin’s music is like a narcotic. It is so intoxicating that it can become dangerous,” to which Sudbin adds, by way of caution: “Enjoy responsibly—at your own peril.”
Carefully curated by Sudbin, the programme traces Scriabin’s stylistic evolution—from his early works, when he was still under the influence of Chopin and devoted to small forms, through his middle period, where the rich, late-Romantic idiom begins to cross into darker, more complex realms, and finally to his late period, in which, in Sudbin’s words, “one sometimes feels too close to the edge of insanity.” In these later works, Scriabin indeed seems to push music to its expressive limits in order to create a climate of spiritual ecstasy.
