Classical CD Reviews – Audiophile Audition
SCRIABIN: Complete Mazurkas: 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3; 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25; 2 Mazurkas, Op. 40 – Eric Le Van, piano – Music & Arts
Eric Le Van explores a realm of Scriabin both derivative and daringly original, his complete mazurkas, which soon rival his middle sonatas in their singular audacity.
Published on June 6, 2012
SCRIABIN: Complete Mazurkas: 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3; 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25; 2 Mazurkas, Op. 40 – Eric Le Van, piano – Music & Arts CD-1125, 72:39 [Distr. By Albany] ****:
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) composed mazurkas from a relatively young age (he was sixteen in 1888) to his thirty-first year (1903), having transformed Chopin’s most idiosyncratic dance form into fantasias and poems of a highly personal and introspective character. Eric Le Van, a protégé of Earle Voorhies and Rudolf Buchbinder, has recorded (at the Bavarian Radio studios, 15-18 April 2002) these twenty-one tone-poems with a remarkable fidelity to the composer’s spirit, its visionary combination of plasticity and improvisation coupled with passions condensed into vital nationalistic expression.
The Op. 3 (1888-1890) set reveal the influence of Scriabin’s pedagogy with Safonov, Taneyev, and Arensky, even the sentimental side (in Op. 3, No. 2Allegretto non tanto) of Tchaikovsky in the latter‘s The Seasons. But already these standardized “salon” forms of Chopin indicate an exotic or gnostic flavor, in the sudden urges into distant key centers in the midst of an otherwise folkish idiom, as in Con moto, No. 8. The enriched harmonies of No. 4Moderato add a decided luster to the hybrid rhythms in which Scriabin merges the mazurka with the waltz or Schubert’s German dance. Scriabin’s rarified intimacy prevails in the drooping figures of No. 5 Doloroso, whose last page indicates a fiercer emotion. Scherzando No. 6 at first bows to Schumann’s playful instincts, but the central section almost reworks the Arabeske in miniature. No. 7 is marked Con passione, and its darkly chromatic line might refer back to Chopin’s Op. 17, No. 4. The middle section’s brighter coloration seems forced and bittersweet. The last two pieces bear no tempo indication, but the influence of Chopin’s early mazurkas, opp. 6-7, seems nigh in No. 9, an insistent excursion in militant dark keys. The last of the set, No. 10, has the breadth of a ballade, its ethos within the Chopin oeuvre of opp. 24 and 34. Here, Scriabin definitely merges aspects of the national dance impulse with his own predilection for eddied fantasia.
The Nine Mazurkas (1898-1899) announce (in Allegro, No. 1) a fully-formed personality, already confident in those impulsive little runs and ornaments that gravitate to some unknown poetic region. The rhythmic asymmetries have become more acute and less apologetic. Glittery chords and runs in the No. 2Allegretto, added to a distinct parlando element, make the music a hybrid of Chopin and Liszt but also a contemporary of Debussy. The Lento No. 3 might have taken a page from Schumann’s Prophet Bird for broken-phrase delicacy. The harmonic motion slows down to a kind of poised stasis which dissolves into interstellar space. The Vivo No. 4 plays like a late Chopin etude in three voices, not quite a waltz, not quite an impromptu, whose middle section thickens and darkens simultaneously. Agitato, No. 5 suggests Rachmaninov or Medtner, whose base line becomes assertively furioso, and the textures polyphonic in that angular and mercurial style that makes Scriabin unique. The middle section thins out, parlando, almost a modal piece by Grieg. Grieg, again, could claim the opening bars of the Allegretto, a kind of hybrid folk song and plainchant. The mazurka rhythm kicks in in three voices, but the harmonic resolutions do not fall predictably. The breakthrough comes on the last page, a pageant of triumphal bells. The No. 7 Moderato presents a long poem whose ecstasies turn inward, with ornaments that originate with and then transcend their Chopin origins. The mood lightens mid-way, and the bells ring out once more only to subside into those elastic, boa-elongated melodies that trip over each other in dreamy nostalgia. A diatonic purity emerges with the opening of No. 8 Allegretto, but its simple jewelry darkens and a martial determinism reigns until the da capo dissipates most of the clouds. No. 9 offers Bartok’s favored Mesto indication, an intimate piece that walks the mazurka-waltz tightrope along a ridge of expressive bass chords. Its ostinato tropes ring with Romantic longing, but the cadences fall outside out classical orientation, even moving in passing whole-tones. Can the audacities of the Fourth and Fifth Sonatas be far away?
The Two Mazurkas (1903), marked Allegro and Piacevole, respectively, proffer jerky rhythms but major chords that shimmer with distilled Dionysiac energy. The latter piece casts an autumn glow on a salon style quite reminiscent of the aforementioned Grieg. Its delicate tendrils make a point and fade into the Scriabin aether. To say the journey through the Scriabin mazurkas has been provocative remains an understatement.
—Gary Lemco